43 Quotes by Gerrit Smith

Life is short. Let us hasten to say what we believe men need to have said, even though we shall be hated for saying it.

The most effectual of all ways for making our- selves feel morally whole, and for attaining to the greatest heights of self-complacency, is to fall upon others for the sins of which we are ourselves guilty.

Truth and mercy require the exertion - never the suppression, of man's noble rights and powers.

Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.

God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power - of assuming God's place and relation towards his fellow-men.

Let the poor man count as his enemy, and his worst enemy, every invader of the right of free discussion.

I do not object to the construction of rail roads and canals.

I need say no more, to prove that slavery is entirely unlike the servitude in the patriarchal families.

When a good man lends himself to the advocacy of slavery, he must, at least for a time, feel himself to be any where but at home, amongst his new thoughts, doctrines, and modes of reasoning.