Slavery Quotes - Page 21

• Compelled to become instruments of war, to kill and be killed, child soldiers are forced to give violent expression to the hatreds of adults

  Olara Otunnu

  Children, Hate, War

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• It seems to me that the term 'free will' is one of the most manipulated and exploited terms. The real explanation of free will is not that you have free will but that your will can eventually make you free, that will can liberate you, that will can release you from slavery.

  Torkom Saraydarian

  Motivational, Real, Free Will

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• Let us start with the biggest no brainer of injustice in the world and that is slavery.

  Gary Haugen

  World, Injustice, No Brainer

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• Some suffering is given in order to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm), some suffering is given not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones (as in the case of Joseph sold into slavery), and some suffering has no purpose other than to lead a person to love God more ardently for himself alone and so discover the ultimate peace and freedom.

  Timothy Keller

  God, Pain, Past

  Timothy Keller (2013). “Walking with God through Pain and Suffering”, p.40, Penguin

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• This was the first Memorial Day [Monday, May 1st, 1865]. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is Black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.

  David W. Blight

  Memorial Day, Song, Monday

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• The incomparable James Walvin has done it again: he has crafted a beautifully written and deeply informed single volume history of the Atlantic slave trade and its consequences on three continents. This book is full of fresh ideas and astounding detail; it is at once great storytelling, punctuated with real people and voices, and an unblinking analysis of numerous great questions and paradoxes about the power of slavery in creating the Atlantic world over four centuries.

  David W. Blight

  Real, Book, Ideas

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• Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Years, Two, America

  "The Case for Reparations". www.theatlantic.com.

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• The centre of his world was the south where he was born in slavery some 79 years ago and where he did his work as a creative scientist.

  George Washington Carver

  Creativity, Years, Creative

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• God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world.

  Millard Fillmore

  Government, Evil, Presidential

  Millard Fillmore (1970). “Millard Fillmore Papers”

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• Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union.

  John Quincy Adams

  Presidential, Unions, Stains

  John Quincy Adams (1969). “The diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794-1845: American diplomacy, and political, social, and intellectual life, from Washington to Polk”

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• Justice needs money; it always has . . . whether for abolition of slavery and early women's rights movements or the civil rights and environmental drives of our generation.

  Ralph Nader

  Rights, Our Generation, Abolition Of Slavery

  Ralph Nader (2014). “Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State”, p.192, Nation Books

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• If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Hate, Believe, Men

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1909). “Interviews”

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• In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. . . . There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; . . . she was doing in all this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery.

  Mark Twain

  Children, Religion, Age

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• It [slavery] has exercised absolute mastery over the American Church. . . . With the Bible in their hands, her priesthood have attempted to prove that slavery came down from God out of heaven. They have become slaveholders and dealers in human flesh.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Hands, Heaven, Religion

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• Under any religion, the preestablished impersonal code transcends the right of the individual to explore, experience, and marvel at the mysteries of his own life and death. Religions introduce us not to God but to slavery. They deprive us of our freedom to explore our own souls and to discover the endless and wondrous possibilities presented to us by an infinite universe. And most often the method of religions is fear, not love. They demand blind obedience and often obedience to dreadful dogma.

  Gerry Spence

  Life And Death, Soul, Religion

  Gerry Spence (2002). “Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom: An Owner's Manual for Life”, p.46, Macmillan

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• Greed is permanent slavery

  Ali ibn Abi Talib

  Wise, Wisdom, Greed

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• Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Men, Soul, Intellectual

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.103, Library of Alexandria

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• From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.

  Frederick Douglass

  Cheer, Angel, Careers

  Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison (1849). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”, p.31

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• Above all I ask leaders and legislators and the entire international community above all to confront the reality of those who have been displaced by force, with effective projects and new approaches in order to protect their dignity, to improve the quality of their life and to face the challenges that are emerging from modern forms of persecution, oppression and slavery.

  Pope Francis

  Reality, Order, Leader

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• My great and exceeding joy over these stupendous achievements, especially over the abolition of slavery (which had been the deepest desire and the great labor of my life), was slightly tinged with a feeling of sadness.

  Frederick Douglass

  Abolition Of Slavery, Desire, Labor

  "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time".

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• It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of slavery. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.

  Frederick Douglass

  Long, Rose, Forever

  Frederick Douglass (2013). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

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• The mere word freedom is the only one that still excites me. I deem it capable of indefinitely sustaining the old human fanaticism. It doubtless satisfies my only legitimate aspiration. Among all the many misfortunes to which we are heir, it is only fair to admit that we are allowed the greatest degree of freedom of thought. It is up to us not to misuse it. To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery-even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness-is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself.

  Andre Breton

  Mean, Justice, Imagination

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• Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Thinking, Employment, Blind

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.33, Random House

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• There is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery, the aftermath of slavery, the development of the Ku Klux Klan. There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.

  Angela Davis

  Ku Klux Klan, Police Violence, Justice

  "Angela Davis: 'There is an unbroken line of police violence in the US that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery" by Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. December 14, 2014.

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• Every time I embrace a black woman I’m embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I’m hugging freedom. The white man forbade me to have the white woman on pain of death... I will not be free until the day I can have a white woman in my bed.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Pain, Men, White

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