"I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom."
Read quote
7 likes
Slavery quotes
Slavery
605 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Slavery
Browse quotes that often appear alongside slavery — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Slavery quotes (page 6 of 31)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"In all of human history no country or no people have suffered such terrible slavery, conquest and foreign oppression and no country and no people have struggled so strenuously for their emancipation than Sicily and the Sicilians."
Read quote
7 likes
"He is sometimes slave who should be master; and sometimes master who should be slave."
Read quote
7 likes
"It is manifestly vital to the success of the anti-slavery cause, that the authority and influence of proslavery, especially of slaveholding, ministers should be destroyed."
Read quote
7 likes
"I welcomed the organization of the Anti-slavery Society."
Read quote
7 likes
"Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work."
Read quote
7 likes
"Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither."
Read quote
7 likes
"Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic."
Read quote
7 likes
"The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general."
Read quote
7 likes
"Slavery existed before the formation of this Union. It derived from the Constitution that recognition which it would not have enjoyed without the confederation. If the States had not united together, there would have been no obligation on adjoining States to regard any species of property unknown to themselves."
Read quote
7 likes
"Have there ever been more submissive slaves? Adoring, even in their irons, the God who punishes them."
Read quote
7 likes
"This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave."
Read quote
6 likes
"I say now, however, as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question - that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices, - I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation."
Read quote
6 likes
"You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it."
Read quote
6 likes
"If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature."
Read quote
6 likes
"In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time."
Read quote
6 likes
"Slavery doesn't have any positives."
Read quote
6 likes
"Part of the reason why we're only now reaching a point in American society where we can talk about the need for truth and reconciliation and the legacy of slavery is that it was such a dominant part of our history."
Read quote
6 likes
"Marriage is but slavery made to appear civilized."
Read quote
6 likes
"Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery."
Read quote
6 likes