Slavery Quotes - Page 15

• Saying slavery was the cause of secession isn't politically correct; it's correct correct.

  Larry Wilmore

  Causes, Secession, Politically Correct

  "CNN Newsroom", www.cnn.com. December 21, 2010.

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• I thought I was making fifty dollars a week [at MGM], but it turned out to be $35 because twelve weeks of the year you were on layoff. It was white slavery, and it lasted for seventeen years.

  Ava Gardner

  Years, White, Twelve

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• There's an old saying in the days of slavery, there are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master to exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. That gave you privilege. Colin Powell is permitted to come into the house of the master, as long as he will serve the master according to the master's dictates. Now, when Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture.

  Harry Belafonte

  Long, House, Want

  "Belafonte on Bush, War and Wiretaps". Interview with Amy Goodman, www.alternet.org. February 3, 2006.

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• I don’t believe it is possible to transcend race in this country. Race is a factor in this society. The legacy of Jim Crow and slavery has not gone away. It is not an accident that African-Americans experience high crime rates, are poor, and have less wealth. It is a direct result of our racial history.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Believe, Race

  "On the Road with Barack Obama". www.essence.com. December, 16, 2009.

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• I went back and researched the history of gospel; where it came from, slavery times, communicating with each other without their master knowing what they are saying, and that gospel artists view themselves differently.

  Boris Kodjoe

  Artist, Views, Knowing

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• My brother has two children now, so I've been playing aunt Renee. They're two and four. It's chaos. Moms out there, kudos to you. The cool thing about being an aunt is like, I can leave. No offense to my big brother Drew, but that is slavery. I dare you to take a shower. You can't do anything unless they let you. It's a dictatorship. They're little dictators in their crib.

  Renee Zellweger

  Mom, Brother, Children

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• We have faith that future generations will know here, in the middle of the twentieth century, there came a time when men of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  War, Ignorance, Fighting

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• I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Doe, Tests, Moral

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “Arguably”, p.410, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.

  Butterfly McQueen

  Freedom, Religion, Ancestor

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• In the Shadow of Slavery covers two and a half centuries of black life in New York City, and skillfully interweaves the categories of race and class as they affected the formation of African American identity. Leslie Harris has made a major contribution to our understanding of the black experience.

  Eric Foner

  New York, Race, Class

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• We have inherited a fear of memories of slavery. It is as if to remember and acknowledge slavery would amount to our being consumed by it. As a matter of fact, in the popular black imagination, it is easier for us to construct ourselves as children of Africa, as the sons and daughters of kings and queens, and thereby ignore the Middle Passage and centuries of enforced servitude in the Americas. Although some of us might indeed be the descendants of African royalty, most of us are probably descendants of their subjects, the daughters and sons of African peasants or workers.

  Angela Davis

  Daughter, Queens, Kings

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• In the way our Fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction . . . . All I have asked or desired anywhere, is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the Fathers of our government originally placed it upon.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Father, Government, Mind

  Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)”, p.567, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government.

  Frederick Douglass

  Government, Essence, Federal Government

  Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner, Yuval Taylor (1999). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.536, Chicago Review Press

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• Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Giving, Needs

  Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner, Yuval Taylor (1999). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.536, Chicago Review Press

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• The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.

  George Washington

  Rights, Arbitrary, Use

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson, United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission (1944). “The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, 1745-1799: prepared under the direction of the United States George Washington bicentennial commission and published by authority of Congress”

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• The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented . . . no insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth.

  John Quincy Adams

  Country, Mother, Hypocrisy

  "An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport". Book by John Quincy Adams (p.50), 1837.

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• In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in the making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Independence, Sacred, Aids

  Abraham Lincoln (1989). “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 1: 1832-1858: Library of America #45”, p.396, Library of America

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• The Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider it purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? it is neither.

  Frederick Douglass

  Liberty, Purpose, Temples

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

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• Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

  Frederick Douglass

  Reading, Hands, Principles

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

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• Slavery is ...an atrocious debasement of human nature.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Human Nature, Humans

  Benjamin Franklin, Jared Sparks (1840). “The Works of Benjamin Franklin: Containing Several Political and Historical Tracts Not Included in Any Former Edition, and Many Letters, Official and Private, Not Hitherto Published; with Notes and a Life of the Author”, p.515

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• The tobacco business is a conspiracy against womanhood and manhood. It owes its origin to that scoundrel Sir Walter Raleigh, who was likewise the founder of American slavery.

  John Harvey Kellogg

  Smoking, Conspiracy, Scoundrels

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• I have ever been opposed to banks, - opposed to internal improvements by the general government, - opposed to distribution of public lands among the states, - opposed to taking the power from the hands of the people, - opposed to special monopolies, - opposed to a protective tariff, - opposed to a latitudinal construction of the constitution, - opposed to slavery agitation and disunion. This is my democracy. Point to a single act of my public career not in keeping with these principles.

  Sam Houston

  Hands, Land, Careers

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• Cast your whole vote, not a piece of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to a majority; but is irresistable when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Giving Up, Fear, War

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.11, Hayes Barton Press

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• Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.

  Ibn Khaldun

  Animal, Dumb, Littles

  "Muqaddimah" translated by Franz Rosenthal, Princeton University Press, 1981.

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• The Conservative knows that to regard man as part of an undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery.

  Barry Goldwater

  Men, Conservative, Mass

  Barry Goldwater (2010). “The Conscience of a Conservative”, p.11, Bottom of the Hill

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