
“Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.”
2012, Remarks at Clinton Global Initiative (September 2012)
Context: Now, I do not use that word, "slavery" lightly. It evokes obviously one of the most painful chapters in our nation’s history. But around the world, there’s no denying the awful reality. When a man, desperate for work, finds himself in a factory or on a fishing boat or in a field, working, toiling, for little or no pay, and beaten if he tries to escape -- that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving -- that’s slavery. When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that’s slavery. When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family -- girls my daughters’ age -- runs away from home, or is lured by the false promises of a better life, and then imprisoned in a brothel and tortured if she resists -- that’s slavery. It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world.
“Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.”
“Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.”
"Excitable Boy", written by Warren Zevon and LeRoy Marinell
Excitable Boy (1978)
Little Boy Blue http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/eugenefield/poems/poemsofchildhood/littleboyblue.html, st. 1
Love Songs of Childhood (1894)
The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution
Source: The Friends of Voltaire (1906), Ch. 8 : Turgot: The Statesman, p. 221
“A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself.”
Source: Imajica
"Tennessee Williams" (1956), p. 97
Profiles (1990)