Slavery quotes
605 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside slavery — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?"
"He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty."
"Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character."
"What is Freedom? ye can tell That which slavery is, too well For its very name has grown To an echo of your own."
"We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe - nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself."
"But, slavery is good for some people! ! ! As a good thing, slavery is strikingly peculiar, in this, that it is the only good thing which no man ever seeks the good of, for himself."
"I wish all men to be free. I wish the material prosperity of the already free which I feel sure the extinction of slavery would bring."
"Slavery is wrong. If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away."
"Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again."
"An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave in not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it."
"I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question (slavery). They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores-plasters too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have proved so temporary-so evanescent."
"When Judge Douglas says that whoever, or whatever community, wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong."
"I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District of Columbia."
"We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued."
"I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing, that no man desires for himself."
"I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war."
"The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own negroes."
"We want, and must have, a national policy, as to slavery, which deals with it as being wrong."
"When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life."
"What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity save and except this institution of Slavery?"
