“I have in my head a whole army of people pleading to be let out and awaiting my commands.”
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician
Letter to A.S. Suvorin (October 27, 1888)
Letters
““I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race
Who dwell in freedom’s boasted land with no abiding place
I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored,
For they have long been toiling, and yet had no reward
They are forced the crops to culture, but not for them they yield,
Although both late and early, they labor in the field.
While I bear upon my body, the scores of many a gash,
I’m pleading for my people who groan beneath the lash.
I’m pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair
Upon the hated auction block, and see their children there.
I feel for those in bondage—well may I feel for them.
I know how fiendish hearts can be that sell their fellow men.
Yet those oppressors steeped in guilt—I still would have them live;
For I have learned of Jesus, to suffer and forgive!
I want no carnal weapons, no machinery of death.
For I love to not hear the sound of war’s tempestuous breath.
I do not ask you to engage in death and bloody strife.
I do not dare insult my God by asking for their life.
But while your kindest sympathies to foreign lands do roam,
I ask you to remember your own oppressed at home.
I plead with you to sympathize with signs and groans and scars,
And note how base the tyranny beneath the stripes and stars.”
Olive Gilbert & Sojourner Truth (1878), Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time, page 303.
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Sojourner Truth14
African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist 1797–1883Related quotes
“Daring with my poem 'Special Pleading' to give myself such freedom as I desired, in my own style”
Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) American musician, poet
From Memorial by William Hayes Ward to The Poems of Sidney Lanier (ed. Mary D Lanier)
Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader
The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)
Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist
Letter to her mother (14 March 1847)
Context: If, while I hear the shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth for the dumb, am I not guilty? Or should I go from house to house to do it, when I could tell so many more in less time, if they should be gathered in one place? You would not object or think it wrong, for a man to plead the cause of the suffering and the outcast; and surely the moral character of the act is not changed because it is done by a woman. I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex. I only ask that you will not withhold your consent from my doing anything that I think is my duty to do.
“Their cause I plead,—plead it in heart and mind;
A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.”
David Garrick (1717–1779) English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer
Prologue on Quitting the Stage in 1776. Compare: "I would help others, out of a fellow-feeling", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.
Joachim Peiper (1915–1976) SS officer
Letter to Willis Everett, July 14, 1946. Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 14, citing Everett Papers in note 32.
Lindsay Lohan (1986) American actress and pop singer
As quoted in "Lindsay: "I Am Addicted to Alcohol and Drugs" at TMZ (23 August 2007) http://www.tmz.com/2007/08/23/lindsay-lohan-i-am-addicted-to-alcohol-and-drugs/8.
