The Groundings with my Brothers https://archive.org/details/TheGroundingsWithMyBrothers (1969)
Context: We were told that violence in itself is evil, and that, whatever the cause, it is unjustified morally. By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master? By what standards can we equate the violence of blacks who have been oppressed, suppressed, depressed and repressed for four centuries with the violence of white fascists. Violence aimed at the recovery of human dignity and at equality cannot be judged by the same yardstick as violence aimed at maintenance of discrimination and oppression.
“A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains”
Their Morals and Ours (1938)
Context: (On the American Civil War) "History has different yardsticks for the cruelty of the Northerners and the cruelty of the Southerners in the Civil War. A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!"
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Leon Trotsky 106
Marxist revolutionary from Russia 1879–1940Related quotes
St. 1
"Stanzas on Freedom" (1843)
Context: If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed?
“The King is only a slave like yourself, locked with heavier chains.”
"By This Axe I Rule!" (1967)
Source: The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003), Ch. 1
Statement at the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention (July 1837), quoted in Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (1959) by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 63
1830s
Context: I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom.
Source: 2010s, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012), Chapter One
