1,063 Quotes About Slavery

If you’ve never had actual freedom, you don’t miss it. You can’t miss what you’ve never had.

The wider moral argument in this text coheres closely with attitudes in the Wilberforce circle towards human nature in the context of slavery.

Just as twenty-first century masters of the universe exploit workers, lobby for tax loopholes, and devise or reap profits from predatory business practices, [Thomas] Jefferson and his peers found it very hard to give up the unearned advantages of systems of exploitation.

Maybe slavery has been with us for centuries because of the inclination to maintain economic systems geared more toward commodifying human existence than developing its spiritual, creative, or scientific potentials. Such commodification instantly erases any recognition of humanity as a priceless value unto itself and reduces individuals as well as entire races, or a specific gender, to a bargain-priced 'other.

If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.

I care because as long as slavery is sanctioned in this world, either directly or tacitly, we are a doomed species. There is no hope for progress, no hope for a world of peace and prosperity, if some men are allowed dominion over others for as arbitrary a reason as skin color.

Better to be with the ancestors than to live bonded to somebody else, who might be kind, who might be cruel, who might even make you master to many slaves of your own, but was still master over you.

Slavery blunts the edge of all our rebukes of tyranny abroad - the criticisms that we make upon other nations, only call forth ridicule, contempt, and scorn. In a word, we are made a reproach and a by-word to a mocking earth, and we must continue to be so made, so long as slavery continues to pollute our soil.

To rob a person of their freedom, of the right to create their own destiny-that to me is the supreme evil.