Slave Quotes: Voices from the Past

"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it"

Thomas Jefferson, President

"There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves"

Jose Rizal, Writer

"A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years"

Lysander Spooner, Philosopher

"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves"

Lord Byron, Poet

"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots"

Erich Fromm, Psychologist

"I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed"

Ralph Ellison, Author

"The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them"

Emily Bronte, Novelist

"Gifts make slaves"

Levi Strauss, Businessman

"A man in debt is so far a slave"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

"One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves"

Albert Camus, Philosopher

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves"

Henry David Thoreau, Author

"Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God"

Alexander Pope, Poet

"There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his"

Helen Keller, Author

"Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave"

Emile M. Cioran, Philosopher

"The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves"

George Washington, President

"Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model"

Vincent Van Gogh, Artist

"He who is a slave to his stomach seldom worships God"

Saadi, Poet

"I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves"

Harriet Tubman, Activist

"Flee the country where a lone man holds all power: It is a nation of slaves"

Simon Bolivar, Leader

"Your secret is your prisoner; once you reveal it, you become its slave"

Solomon Ibn Gabriol, Poet

"There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave"

Nikki Giovanni, Poet

"Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves"

Oliver Goldsmith, Poet

"He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave"

Andrew Carnegie, Businessman

"Bastard Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves"

Thomas Moore, Poet

"Who covets more is evermore a slave"

Robert Herrick, Poet

"He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave"

William Drummond

"So much is man the slave of his heart that he will shut his eyes to what does not please him and believe all that he hopes"

Mika Waltari, Author

"He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; and he that dares not reason is a slave"

William Drummond

"Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves"

David Garrick, Actor

"The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler"

Samuel Morse, Inventor

"The perfection of our union, especially our commitment to equality of opportunity, has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, 'In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.'"

Paul Ryan, Politician

"I'm not a slave to objectivity. I'm never quite sure what it means. And it means different things to different people"

Peter Jennings, Journalist

"The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear"

Harriet Ann Jacobs, Writer

"Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves"

Arrian, Historian

"Slave girls on Gor address all free men as Master, though, of course only one such would be her true Master"

John Norman, Writer

"Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge"

Fritz Perls, Psychologist

"The proposition of an established classification of states as slave states and free states, as insisted on by some, and into northern and southern, as maintained by others, seems to me purely imaginary, and of course the supposed equilibrium of those classes a mere conceit"

William H. Seward, Politician

"Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

"The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

"We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end"

Gilbert K. Chesterton, Writer

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