“You have fettered yourself of your own free will, man—break the fetters!”

— Halldór Laxness

Jórunn of Veghús
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

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Halldór Laxness 216

Icelandic author 1902–1998

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“An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.”

Henry Clay (1777–1852) American politician from Kentucky

Speech on the Emancipation of South America http://www.bartleby.com/268/9/5.html, House of Representatives (24 March 1818); The Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, vol. I (1857), ed. Daniel Mallory

“Is true Freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt?”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

St. 3
"Stanzas on Freedom" (1843)
Context: p>Is true Freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt? No! true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free!<p

“Unless the gods deceive my mind,
That man is forging fetters for himself.”

Theognis of Megara (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC

Source: Elegies, Lines 539-540, as translated by Dorothea Wender.

“Never give up! it is wiser and better
Always to hope, than once to despair.
Fling off the load of Doubt's cankering fetter,
And break the dark spell of tyrannical care.”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Never Give Up! http://www.lib.utexas.edu/epoetry/tupperma.q3c/tupperma.q3c-89.html, l. 1-2.
Ballads for the Times (1851)

“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1850s, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? (1852)

“If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 58

“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.”

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.

“Every slave is a stolen man; every slaveholder is a man-stealer. By no precedent, no example, no law, no compact, no purchase, no bequest, no inheritance, no combination of circumstances, is slaveholding right or justifiable. While a slave remains in his fetters, the land must have no rest.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

"No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery" (1854) essay http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/185/civil-rights-and-conflict-in-the-united-states-selected-speeches/5061/no-compromise-with-the-evil-of-slavery-speech-1854/

“That the environment does wrongs to man’s mind today none will deny. These wrongs are not done because consciousness imprisons the instincts with the fetters of necessity; but because bourgeois man is unconscious of the determinism of his culture. Because of this the instincts are losing such freedom as they attained, are becoming crippled, and less free. Unconsciousness and inexperience, not consciousness and experience, are the gaolers of modern bourgeois man.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Further Studies in a Dying Culture (1949), Chapter IV: Consciousness: A Study in Bourgeois Psychology

“The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. He frees himself and shows the way to others. Freedom and slavery are mental states. Therefore, the first thing to say to yourself: 'I shall no longer accept the role of a slave. I shall not obey orders as such but shall disobey them when they are in conflict with my conscience.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Harijan (24 February 1946). As quoted in The Politics Of Nonviolent Action, Gene Sharp, Porter Sargent Publishers (1973), p. 59
1940s

“You have fettered yourself of your own free will, man—break the fetters!”

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Halldór Laxness 216

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