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

"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

"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

"Gifts make slaves"

Levi Strauss, Businessman

"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

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

George Washington, President

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

Saadi, Poet

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

Vincent Van Gogh, Artist

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

Harriet Tubman, Activist

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

Emile M. Cioran, Philosopher

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

Oliver Goldsmith, Poet

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

Nikki Giovanni, 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

"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

"Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves"

David Garrick, Actor

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

William Drummond

"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

"A man in debt is so far a slave"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

"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

"It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them"

Epictetus, 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

"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth"

Abraham Lincoln, President

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy"

Abraham Lincoln, President

"He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature"

Aristotle, Philosopher

"Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children"

Albert Camus, Philosopher

"Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two"

Ambrose Bierce, Journalist

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