Slave Quotes

Explore a curated selection of quotations connected to slavery, including voices of the enslaved, abolitionists, witnesses, and chroniclers. These words reveal pain, resilience, resistance, and the complex realities of bondage and its enduring legacy. Read with care and empathy, considering the historical contexts and the people behind each line. Whether you seek insight for study, reflection, or conversation, these quotes invite deeper understanding and responsible remembrance, honoring those who endured oppression and those who fought to end it while acknowledging how the past still shapes the present.

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

Jose Rizal, Writer

Small: Jose Rizal

"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

"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 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

Small: Thomas Jefferson

"As long as a word remains unspoken, you are its master; once you utter it, you are its slave"

Solomon Ibn Gabriol, Poet

Small: Solomon Ibn Gabriol

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

Solomon Ibn Gabriol, Poet

Small: Solomon Ibn Gabriol

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

Lord Byron, Poet

Small: Lord Byron

"Gifts make slaves"

Levi Strauss, Businessman

"Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me"

Walt Whitman, Poet

Small: Walt Whitman

"Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave"

Constantin Brancusi, Sculptor

Small: Constantin Brancusi

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

Emily Bronte, Novelist

"The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits"

Theodore Roosevelt, President

Small: Theodore Roosevelt

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

Henry David Thoreau, Author

Small: Henry David Thoreau

"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

Small: Ambrose Bierce

"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

Small: Helen Keller

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

Erich Fromm, Psychologist

Small: Erich Fromm

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

Andrew Carnegie, Businessman

Small: Andrew Carnegie

"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

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

Oliver Goldsmith, Poet

"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

"Who covets more is evermore a slave"

Robert Herrick, Poet

"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

"That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves"

Kim Stanley Robinson, 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 worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave"

James Connolly, Politician

"A man in debt is so far a slave"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

Small: Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out"

Winston Churchill, Statesman

Small: Winston Churchill

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

Albert Camus, Philosopher

Small: Albert Camus

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

Epictetus, Philosopher

Small: Epictetus

"Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners"

Vladimir Lenin, Leader

Small: Vladimir Lenin

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

Alexander Pope, Poet

Small: Alexander Pope

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

George Washington, President

Small: George Washington

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

Vincent Van Gogh, Artist

Small: Vincent Van Gogh

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

Emile M. Cioran, Philosopher

Small: Emile M. Cioran

"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

Small: Simon Bolivar

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

Saadi, Poet

Small: Saadi

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

Nikki Giovanni, Poet

"Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need"

Ben Jonson, Poet

Small: Ben Jonson

"I'm not gonna be a slave. I'm a rock n' roller"

Steven Adler, Musician

Small: Steven Adler

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