1,063 Quotes About Slavery

I had a lot of hatred, but I realized that kind of hate didn't do much. I had to start fueling myself with pride. We owe the ancestors that. So many of the souls who died in bondage just want us to recognize their struggle.

O esclavagismo tem diversas versões; múltiplos regímenes. Não tem sempre a mesma forma. Nuns casos eles são escravos porque lhes dizem que o são. Esta é a escravatura honesta. Noutros casos: eles são escravos porque lhes dizem que não o são. Esta é a escravatura desonesta: a do escravo que é escravo porque o convencem de que não o é. No extremo da desonestidade temos a escravatura em que não se limitam a dizer ao escravo que o escravo não é escravo: dizem-lhe que é livre.

No word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it.

Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews). Within the context of medieval Europe, that prohibition was effectively a rule of universal abolition.

In a capitalist world, the word capital has taken on more and more uses. . . . human capital, for instance, which is what labor accumulates through education and work experience. Human capital differs from the classic kind in that you can't inherit it, and it can only be rented, not bought or sold.

If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.

But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies.

You can’t ‘get over’ something that is still happening. Which is why black Americans can’t ‘get over’ slavery or Jim Crow.

Every man knows that slavery is a curse. Whoever denies this, his lips libel his heart.