1,063 Quotes About Slavery

. . . I had my moments. My free, uninterrupted, discretionary moments. Strange, though: it is the memory of those moments that bothers me the most. The thought, specifically, that other men enjoyed whole lifetimes comprised of such moments. (Thomas Havens)

Why did the man who would become revered for generations as the Great Emancipator hesitate to do his "emancipating," and if it did take him so long, what is so "great" about that?

And these people represented to me an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin. And ’tis most evident and plain that simple Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive, and virtuous mistress. ’Tis she alone, if she were permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions of man. Religion would here but destroy that tranquillity they possess by ignorance; and laws would but teach ’em to know offense, of which now they have no notion.

I like the Dutch mentality. Especially, within the great experience of remembrance, when you were cutting off my fingers. Yes, chopping by lovely charme.

you lost your language under the weight of their words and you wonder why you cannot respond to the voice of your own body.________urban slavery.

Something in the water near to him caught his interest, he followed and thought it to be wooden debris, but as soon as he turned his attention elsewhere, the severed head surfaced facing his former direction. (Hope River Story)

There are still slave auctions in this day and age. I’ll bet you thought that was impossible, but it is still the world we live in.”-Shenita Etwaroo

I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.

I forgot that in the land of my birth the shadows are too dense for light to penetrate.