Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, thou art a bitter draught.
—Laurence Sterne (1713–68) Irish Anglican Novelist, Clergyman
Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American Novelist
Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man’s nature—opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
The abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.
—Diogenes Laertius (f.3rd Century CE) Biographer of the Greek Philosophers
Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves.
—David Garrick (1717–79) English Actor, Theatre Manager, Playwright
It is observed by Homer that a man loses half his virtue the day he becomes a slave; he might have added, with truth, that he is likely to lose more than half when he becomes a slave-master.
—Richard Whately (1787–1863) English Philosopher, Theologian
Here lies the evil of slavery: Its whips, imprisonments, and even the horrors of the middle passage, are not to be named, in comparison with the extinction of the proper consciousness of a human being—with the degradation of a man into a brute.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
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 (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Slavery is a state so improper, so degrading, so ruinous to the feelings and capacities of human nature, that it ought not to be suffered to exist.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
That execrable sum of all villainies commonly called the slave-trade.
—John Wesley (1703–91) British Methodist Leader, Preacher, Theologian
The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder’s moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
The creation of the spiritual was no accident. It was a creation born of necessity, so that the slave might more adequately adjust himself to the conditions of the New World.
—Benjamin Mays (1894–1984) American Minister, Educator, Activist, Scholar
Captivity is the greatest of all evils that can befall one.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Where slavery is, there liberty cannot be; and where liberty is, there slavery cannot be.
—Charles Sumner (1811–74) American Lawyer, Statesman
Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone… I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
It is injustice to permit slavery to remain for a single hour.
—William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British Prime Minister
I pity them greatly, but I must be mum, for how could we do without sugar and rum?
—William Cowper (1731–1800) English Anglican Poet, Hymn writer
So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to the master—so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil—so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best-regulated administration of slavery.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) American Abolitionist, Author
Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed heathen are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) American Abolitionist, Author
There is a law above all human enactments, written upon the heart by the finger of God; and while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty phantasy, that man can hold property in man.
—Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) Scottish Jurist, Politician
Slavery is a system of outrage and robbery.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American Novelist, Human Rights Activist
Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Today the large organization is lord and master, and most of its employees have been desensitized much as were the medieval peasants who never knew they were serfs.
—Ralph Nader (b.1934) American Lawyer, Consumer Activist
Every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has a right to but himself.
—John Locke (1632–1704) English Philosopher, Physician
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