Slave Quotes

"The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable"

Andrea Dworkin, Critic

"There shall be no slave in your home, male or female: Least of all the mother of your son"

Franz Grillparzer, Poet

"Many attempts had been made by colonial legislatures to cut off or to tax the importation of slaves"

Albert Bushnell Hart, Historian

"To this wonderful page in our country's history another more glorious still will be added, and the slave shall show at last to his free brothers a sharpened sword forged from the links of his fetters"

Giuseppe Garibaldi

"Actors work and slave and it is the color of your hair that can determine your fate in the end"

Helen Hayes, Actress

"To reduce this claim of slavery to an absurdity, it is only necessary to add that there are only two states in which slaves are a majority, and not one in which the slaveholders are not a very disproportionate minority"

William H. Seward, Politician

"Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion"

Giacomo Casanova, Celebrity

"Slavery was regarded by Aristotle as an ordinance of nature, and so probably was it by the slaves themselves in olden time"

Alfred Marshall, Economist

"There is not only no free state which would now establish it, but there is no slave state, which, if it had had the free alternative as we now have, would have founded slavery"

William H. Seward, Politician

"The right to have a slave implies the right in some one to make the slave; that right must be equal and mutual, and this would resolve society into a state of perpetual war"

William H. Seward, Politician

"I mean to say that Congress can hereafter decide whether any states, slave or free, can be framed out of Texas. If they should never be framed out of Texas, they never could be admitted"

William H. Seward, Politician

"But you answer, that the Constitution recognizes property in slaves. It would be sufficient, then, to reply, that this constitutional recognition must be void, because it is repugnant to the law of nature and of nations"

William H. Seward, Politician

"But assuming the same premises, to wit, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground; for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other"

William H. Seward, Politician

"If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave"

Wayne Dyer, Psychologist

"Too often a story is examined through biased eyes, without a sensitivity for everyone who forged it. It's seen from the point of view of the great white savior, and rarely is the perspective of the slave a part"

Jeffrey Wright, Actor

"I think he was explicit that it was a slave labor situation, but I was not alarmed at that point, because there were so many tragedies involved in that war. That was the first time I had any indication that something was sort of strange"

Charles Guggenheim, Director

"Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave"

Theodore Dreiser, Novelist

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

Kim Stanley Robinson, Writer

"With regard to the moral and religious condition of the slaves, I cannot, either from what I observe, or from what is told me, consider it in any way gratifying"

Frederick Law Olmsted, Architect

"Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave"

Francis Scott Key, Author

"I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex"

Lucy Stone, Activist

"No one is more enslaved than a slave who doesn't think they're enslaved"

Kate Beckinsale, Actress

"We are slaves to whatever we don't understand"

Vernon Howard, Author

"We are men, and propose to live like men in this free land, without the contamination of slave labor, or die like men, if need be, in asserting the rights of our race, our country, and our families"

Denis Kearney, Politician

"They are imported by companies, controlled as serfs, worked like slaves, and at last go back to China with all their earnings. They are in every place, they seem to have no sex. Boys work, girls work; it is all alike to them"

Denis Kearney, Politician

"But I do not admit the comparison between your slaves and even the lowest class of European free labourers, for the former are allowed the exercise of no faculties but those which they enjoy in common with the brutes that perish"

Fanny Kemble, Actress

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary"

Cecil Beaton, Photographer

"A mass of dust, world's momentary slave, Is man, in state of our old Adam made, Soon born to die, soon flourishing to fade"

Barnabe Barnes, Poet

"I confront the European elite's self-image as tolerant 'while under their noses women are living like slaves"

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Politician

"I have always believed, heretofore, in the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are born free and equal; but of late it appears that some men are born slaves, and I regret that they are not black, so all the world might know them"

Benjamin F. Wade, Politician

"People say that slaves were taken from Africa. This is not true: People were taken from Africa, among them healers and priests, and were made into slaves"

Abdullah Ibrahim, Musician

"Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves"

Herbert Marcuse, Philosopher

"Neither can men, by the same principles, be considered as lands, goods, or houses, among possessions. It is necessary that all property should be inferiour to its possessor. But how does the slave differ from his master, but by chance?"

Thomas Clarkson, Activist

"In this room we're all here together, but there's probably a lot of different views, people sitting here thinking, I don't own any slaves, all the slaves are dead. Why am I responsible? My family were immigrants, too"

Johnnie Cochran, Lawyer

"The majority of people in Angola were not provided with any kind of schooling and were completely illiterate, very badly paid, and treated almost as slaves"

Louis Leakey, Scientist

"I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown men. We never knew what he was talking about half the time"

Wynton Marsalis, Musician

"This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at work - they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strength into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, perhaps"

Frederick Law Olmsted, Architect

"To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves"

Claud-Adrian Helvetius, Philosopher

"If you can not master your language you must be it's slave"

Jenny Weber

"When I'm rhyming it's all in my head... Like the slaves, when they were picking cotton, they would block out their minds. They would sing"

Wyclef Jean, Musician

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