“They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.”
St. 4
"Stanzas on Freedom" (1843)
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James Russell Lowell175
American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat 1819–1891Related quotes
“He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave.”
William Drummond of Logiealmond (1770–1828) Scottish diplomat and Member of Parliament, poet and philosopher
in Academical Questions (1805), Preface, p. 15 http://books.google.com/books?id=U9FOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR15
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia
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!"
“Let them fear bondage who are slaves to fear;
The sweetest freedom is an honest heart.”
John Ford (dramatist) (1586–1639) dramatist
Act I, sc. iii.
The Lady's Trial (1638)
Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist
The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)
Context: The anti-slavery cause had come to break stronger fetters than those that held the slave. The idea of equal rights was in the air. The wail of the slave, his clanking fetters, his utter need, appealed to everybody. Women heard. Angelina and Sara Grimki and Abby Kelly went out to speak for the slaves. Such a thing had never been heard of. An earthquake shock could hardly have startled the community more. Some of the abolitionists forgot the slave in their efforts to silence the women. The Anti-Slavery Society rent itself in twain over the subject. The Church was moved to its very foundation in opposition.
“To speak falsely is the mark of a slave, but the truth is noble.”
Apollonius of Tyana (15–100) Ancient Greek philosopher
to Euphrates, Epp. Apoll. 83
Letters
Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer
Source: The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 38.
Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, Book VII : Indica, as translated by Edgar Iliff Robson (1929), p. 335
