Economic Slavery Quotes

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  Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Freedom

  Speech by minister Koenders at the presentation of the 2015 Human Rights Tulip, November 12, 2015.

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• Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Life, Strong, Freedom

  Speech to 140th Indiana regiment, 17 Mar. 1865

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• Man's inhumanity to man is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep.

  Alexander Berkman

  Lying, Struggle, Men

  Alexander Berkman (1912). “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist”

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• The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Workout, Children

  Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough (1963). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.130, Hackett Publishing

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• The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Grace, Liberty

  Letter to Roger C.Weightman, 24 June 1826.

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• The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live. Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Opportunity, Government, Average

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

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• Formerly when a man worked ten hours a day, it was called economic slavery; nowadays it is called moonlighting.

  Evan Esar

  Work, Men, Slavery

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• I've always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools...I don't see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the Negro. I didn't [paint] just as a historical thing, but because I believe these things tie up with the Negro today. We don't have a physical slavery, but an economic slavery. If these people, who were so much worse off than the people today, could conquer their slavery, we can certainly do the same thing....I am not a politician. I'm an artist, just trying to do my part to bring this thing about.

  Jacob Lawrence

  Believe, School, Artist

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• History has a long-range perspective. It ultimately passes stern judgment on tyrants and vindicates those who fought, suffered, were imprisoned, and died for human freedom, against political oppression and economic slavery.

  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

  Peace, Freedom, Tyrants

  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1949). “Labor's Own William Z. Foster: A Communist's Fifty Years of Working-class Leadership and Struggle”, New York : New Century Publishers

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• We in Africa are always on the receiving end. We have had human slavery, political slavery, economic slavery and now religious slavery. We in the church are saying no. We are prepared to live by what God says, not what you say. Man shall not sleep with man, woman shall not sleep with woman.

  Peter Akinola

  Religious, Sleep, Men

  Associated Press Interview, December 2003.

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