Quotes about slave (1439 quotes, page 15)

“I see that I've said something you don't like,
Something uncouth and bold and terrifying,
And yet, I'll tell you this:
It won't be till each one of us is willing,
Not you, not me, but every one of us,
To hang upon a cross for every man
Who suffers, starves and dies,
Fight his sore battles as they were our own,
And help him from the darkness and the mire,
That there will be no crosses and no tyrants,
No Herods and no slaves.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Dismas, the thief
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Fight , Help , Suffering

“We have no slaves at home. ─ Then why abroad?”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 37.

Home

“Our fathers, in New England, in the Middle Colonies, and in the South, brought African slaves to America for reasons of their own, which it is impossible to justify, and useless now to censure. The God of our fathers has set them free by overruling a vast amount of human selfishness and passion in long-continued political and military conflict. Let the dead past bury its dead. Forgetting the things which are behind, let us reach forth to those things which are before.”

John Albert Broadus (1827–1895) American pastor and theologian

"As to the Colored People" (1 February 1883), as quoted in Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary https://sbts-wordpress-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/sbts/uploads/2018/12/Racism-and-the-Legacy-of-Slavery-Report-v4.pdf#page=6 (December 2018), by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, pp. 38–39

Selfishness , God , Dead , Past

“Only the disciplined ones are free in life. If you are undisciplined you are a slave to your moods, you are a slave to your passions.”

Eliud Kipchoge (1984) Kenyan long-distance runner

Eliud Kipchoge (2018) cited in: " Eliud Kipchoge & David Bedford | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc00mDtzIJU" in Oxford Union, 5 January 2018.

Passion , Life , Mood

“Great organizers, as much as inevitable slaves, tend to stoic moods: it is difficult to be either master or servant if one is sensitive.”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Mood

“In the American civil war partisanship with the sides there was the veil of a kind of civil war here. An unspoken instinct revealed to mutually hostile classes in England that their battle also was being fought in the contest between the free North and the slave-holding South. The triumph of the North, as has been often remarked, was the force that made English liberalism powerful enough to enfranchise the workmen, depose official Christianity in Ireland, and deal a first blow at the landlords.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

‘England and the War’, The Fortnightly Review, No. XLVI (1 October 1870), quoted in John Morley (ed.), The Fortnightly Review, Vol. VIII. New Series (1 July to 1 December 1870), p. 479
1870s

War , Hostility

“The chief blessings of human nature are the three following:—TRUTH—VIRTUE—and LIBERTY.—These are, therefore, the blessings in the possession of which the interest of our country lies, and to the attainment of which our love of it ought to direct our endeavours. By the diffusion of KNOWLEDGE it must be distinguished from a country of Barbarians: by the practice of religious VIRTUE, it must be distinguished from a country of gamblers, Atheists, and libertines: and by the possession of LIBERTY, it must be distinguished from a country of slaves.”

Richard Price (1721–1791) Welsh nonconformist preacher and radical

Source: A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789), p. 11

Knowledge , Truth , Country , Love

“It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Pleasure , Nature

“So near at hand is freedom, and is anyone still a slave?”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXVII: On Taking One’s Own Life

Freedom

“And what is freedom, you ask? It means not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LI: On Baiae and Morals

Chance , Freedom

“In life, for one reason or another, we are all slaves of power.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Nella vita, per un motivo o per un altro, siamo tutti schiavi del potere.
Source: prevale.net

Life

“Under the law, the crime of murder perpetrated by the slave on the person of the master is justifiable”

Luís Gama (1830–1882) Brazilian lawyer, poet, abolitionist and journalist

Subtitle of the article "Aos escravocratas" written by Raul Pompeia. Newspaper "ÇA IRA", August 19, 1882. Source: Benedito, Mouzar (2011). Luiz Gama - o libertador de escravos e sua mãe libertária, Luíza Mahin https://www.expressaopopular.com.br/loja/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/luiz-gama.pdf 2 ed. São Paulo: Expressão Popular. Page: 59. ISBN 85-7743-004-9.

Law , Personality

“Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor; and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of that universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

1870s, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Family , God , Children , Universe

“The hands and feet, including the whole body, are the slaves of your thoughts.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The relationship between the brain and the body is similar to that of a master and a slave. There is a lack of effective communication.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Communication

“Nothing is proved by the expectation of some Northerners that the clause would eventually put an end to slavery, for there was widespread confusion of "slavery" with the "slave trade."”

David Brion Davis (1927–2019) American historian

Both American and British abolitionists assumed that an end to slave imports would lead automatically to the amelioration and gradual abolition of slavery.
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823, page 129. https://books.google.com/books?id=9lsvDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA129

“The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children, apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals.”

John Stuart Mill book Principles of Political Economy

Book V, Chapter 11, Section 9
Principles of Political Economy (1848-1871)

Children , Animals , Parting

“I am a slave to reason. I think about everything - big or small.”

Fadzayi Mahere (1985) Zimbabwean lawyer and politician

https://www.pindula.co.zw/Fadzayi_Mahere.

Thinking

“It is better to live for just a single day as a ruler than to live for forty years as an abject slave.”

Al-Tabari (839–923) influential Persian scholar, historian and exegete of the Qur'an

Source: Babak Khorramdin's letter to his son, rejecting the caliph’s amnesty message, quoted by Al-Tabari, edited by C. E. Bosworth, History of al-Tabari Vol. 33, The: Storm and Stress along the Northern Frontiers of the 'Abbasid Caliphate: The Caliphate of al-Mu'tasim A.D. 833-842/A.H. 218-227 https://books.google.com/books?id=Ky2rl0xN2SQC&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=%22Better+to+live+for+just+a+single+day+as+a+ruler+than+to+live+for+forty+years+as+an+abject+slave.%22&source=bl&ots=D6-WGySNBR&sig=9MJm8qw6MeNgY1kPHEjtcxA_okY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAmoVChMI2YO62Pb0xwIVjOwUCh2l8APi#v=onepage&q=%22Better%20to%20live%20for%20just%20a%20single%20day%20as%20a%20ruler%20than%20to%20live%20for%20forty%20years%20as%20an%20abject%20slave.%22&f=false

“Whoredom and bastardy are defects with regard to a female slave, but not with regard to a male ; because the object in the purchase of female slave, is cohabitation and the generation of children...”

Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani (1117–1197) muhaddith, faqih and author (1135-1164)

Al-Hidayah (593 AH, 1197 CE), Charles Hamilton's translation, 1791
Source: Hidayah (Muslim law book), Hamilton, II, 409. https://archive.org/details/TheHedayaCommentaryOnIslamicLawsByShyakhBurhanuddinAbuBakrAlMarghinani/page/n249/mode/1up (Also quoted in Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Ch. 11)

Children

“The slave trade has another character; it is the very denial of every law, of all social order. Man-hunting constitutes a crime of high treason against humanity. It ought to be repressed wherever it can be reached, on land as well as by sea.”

Auguste, Baron Lambermont (1819–1905) Belgian politician

Source: New Africa; an essay on government civilization in new countries, and on the foundation, organization and administration of the Congo Free State, THE ORIENTAL SLAVE-TRADE, Page 132. https://archive.org/details/newafricaessayon00desciala/page/152/mode/2up Lambermont at the Berlin Conference.

Sea , Law

“In short, man, when he acts ideally, treats these beings at all times as associates, not as slaves or machines, as his best friends and most faithful and valuable allies.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Silent Martyrs of Civilization, p. 65

Faith , Time

“Have you not subdued the whole district, and could you not have taken a few hundred strong men as slaves to have carried all your superfluous stock and the small ivory, and put your one hundred guns in charge?”

Tippu Tip (1837–1905) Swahili slave trader

Source: Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, Page 175 https://archive.org/details/fiveyearswithco00wardgoog/page/n188/mode/2up

Strong , Men

“Our people humanized the violent, inhumane slave plantation society that the British colonialists had established, (but) we are still faced with the insidious nature of a culture that is intended to dehumanize black people wherever black or blackness is found, and our parliaments therefore, while we shall be in the vanguard of removing all laws of discrimination, it is the mental emancipation that shall forever always matter.”

Mia Mottley (1965) prime minister of Barbados

Mia Mottley (2021) cited in: " Mia Mottley: Barbados’ first female leader on a mission to transform island https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/03/mia-mottley-barbados-first-female-leader-mission-to-transform-island" in The Guardian, 3 December 2021.

People , Law , Nature

“The idea of schooling free men in anything would have revolted Athenians. Forced training was for slaves. Among free men, learning was self-discipline, not the gift of experts.”

John Taylor Gatto book The Underground History of American Education

Source: The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling (2001), p. 62

School , Learning , Men , Training

“We are nothing on earth if we are not in the first place the slaves of a cause, the cause of the peoples, the cause of justice and liberty.”

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) Martiniquais writer, psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary

Source: Letter to Roger Tayeb, December 1961, as cited in Peter Geismar, Fanon (1971), p. 185.

Justice , People

“Don't be a slave of falsity which isn't helping you while truth which can help you is ready to be your servant.”

- Goa

Truth , Help

“Farewell, unwashed Russia,
Land of slaves, land of masters,
And you, blue uniforms,
And you, people, devoted to them.
Perhaps beyond the wall of the Caucasus,
I will hide from your pashas,
From their all-seeing eye,
From their all-hearing ears.”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

—Published by Russky Arkhiv. Historical and literary collection (1890) Translation by Anatoly Liberman.
Original:
Прощай, немытая Россiя,
Страна рабовъ, страна господъ,
И вы, мундиры голубые,
И ты, имъ преданный народъ.
Быть можетъ, за стѣной Кавказа
Сокроюсь отъ твоихъ пашей,
Отъ ихъ всевидящаго глаза,
Отъ ихъ всеслышащихъ ушей.
Poems

People

“As to any other laws that slave-holders may make among themselves, as respecting slaves, they can be of no better kind, nor give them any better character, than what is implied in the common report—that there may be some honesty among thieves.”

Ottobah Cugoano (1757–1791) African abolitionist in England

Source: Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1787), p. 4

Law

“If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, ‘of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods’; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.”

Aristotle book Politics

Book I, part 4 (1920 translation by Benjamin Jowett)
Popularly simplified to when the looms spin by themselves, we'll have no need for slaves.
Politics

God