Quotes about slave (1439 quotes, page 4)

“When some one boasted that at the Pythian games he had vanquished men, Diogenes replied, "Nay, I defeat men, you defeat slaves."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 33, 43
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

Men , Game

“The picture of a naked girl is the most peaceful, but also the most unveiling image you can create, so it is very powerful. … We live in a patriarchal system where the female body is totally controlled and used. Women are ashamed of their bodies, and this is a deep problem. We are slaves of men because we do not control our sexuality.”

Oksana Shachko (1987–2018) Ukrainian artist and activist with FEMEN

Interview with Luxemburger Wort (2015)

Women , Men , Peace , Girl

“As to the notion that the Brazilian nation see the criminality of slave trade and have for ever abjured it such a notion is too childish for a grown man really to entertain, however it may suit the Brazilians to endeavour to make it accepted. The plain truth is that the Portuguese are of all European nations the lowest in the moral state and the Brazilians are degenerate Portuguese, demoralized by slavery and slave trade, and all the degrading and corrupting influences connected with both… I have laboured indefatigably all the time I was at the Foreign Office to put an end to the slave trade, and though not with entire at all events with some considerable success and nothing shall induce me to load my conscience with the guilt of having been a party to promoting its revival. I am afraid Bright has been at you upon these Brazilian matters. He has always professed great horror of slave trade and has invariably opposed the employment of any and every means by which it could be made to cease.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to John Russell (5 October 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 544.
1860s

Truth , Time , Success

“His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun. Mine was bounded by time. His stretched away to the silent shores of eternity. I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave. I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for the slave.”

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

Regarding John Brown, as quoted in A Lecture On John Brown http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mfd&fileName=22/22002/22002page.db&recNum=9&tempFile=./temp/~ammem_rvc6&filecode=mfd&next_filecode=mfd&prev_filecode=mfd&itemnum=2&ndocs=32

Freedom , Light , Time , Sun

“In his discussion on slavery Aristotle said that when the shuttle wove by itself and the plectrum played by itself chief workmen would not need helpers nor masters slaves. At the time he wrote, he believed that he was establishing the eternal validity of slavery; but for us today he was in reality justifying the existence of the machine. Work, it is true, is the constant form of man's interaction with his environment, if by work one means the sum total of exertions necessary to maintain life; and the lack of work usually means an impairment of function and a breakdown in organic relationship that leads to substitute forms of work, such as invalidism and neurosis. But work in the form of unwilling drudgery or of that sedentary routine which… the Athenians so properly despised—work in these forms is the true province of machines. Instead of reducing human beings to work-mechanisms, we can now transfer the main part of burden to automatic machines. This potentially… is perhaps the largest justification of the mechanical developments of the last thousand years.”

Lewis Mumford book Technics and Civilization

Source: Technics and Civilization (1934), Ch. 6, sct. 4

Life , Reality , Time , Parting

“Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? […] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. V
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

Men , God , War , Health

“What were these rights and liberties for which Confederates contended? The right to own slaves; the liberty to take this property into the territories.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

James M. McPherson. Battle Cry of Freedom http://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/153655 (1988) p. 241
1980s

“The final irony is that the vast majority of blacks have turned against the party of emancipation and individual responsibility and now support the party of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow laws that now imposes dependency and racist quotas. The same Democratic Party that tells them they cannot succeed on their own. The Party that tells them they are not good enough to intellectually compete with whites. And now we have a black candidate spewing the same vile line so that he can become the head overseer. This is the party that tells blacks they need the Democrats as a crutch: the same party that says it is not racist. Perhaps Jefferson Davis did get the last laugh after all. Did he not think that blacks were so inferior to whites that they could not be trusted to look to their own affairs? That without the slave-supporting Democratic Party the black man would be lost and helpless in a world he lacked the intelligence to barely comprehend.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Gerard Jackson, "The Party of Lincoln vs. the Democrats' hate machine" http://brookesnews.com/080906dems.html (9 June 2008), BrookesNews.

World , Law , Intelligence , Support

“The second person to write a story about a young boy and an escaped slave on the Mississippi wasn't a novelist, he was a typist.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/the-importance-of-going-first.html "The importance of going first" "Seth's Blog" (2012-07-18)

Boy , Personality

“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

Way , Freedom

“What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one’s self became reluctance to assert one’s self, became forgiveness, love of one’s enemies. Misery became a distinction”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 31-32

Love , Fear , Forgiveness

“Though departing from the Truth as it is in Jesus, through introducing Ways of Life attended with unnecessary Expences, many Wants have arisen, the Minds of People have been employ'd in studying to get Wealth, and in this Pursuit, some departing from Equity, have retain'd a Profession of Religion; others have look'd at their Example, and thereby been stengthen'd to proceed further in the same Way: Thus many having encourag'd the Trade of taking Men from Africa and selling them as Slaves.”

John Woolman (1720–1772) American Quaker preacher

Source: The Journal of John Woolman (1774), p. 292; cited in: On The Slave Trade by John Woolman http://www.qhpress.org/texts/oldqwhp/wool-496.htm on qhpress.org, 2013

Life , Men , People , Truth

“Jaipal “was publicly exposed at one of the slave-auctions in some market in Khurasan, just like the thousands of other Hindu captives… (He) was paraded about so that his sons and chieftains might see him in that condition of shame, bonds and disgrace… inflicting upon him the public indignity of ‘commingling him in one common servitude.””

Jayapala (964–1001) Ruler of the Kabal Shabi

Hodivala, 192-93. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

“In pre-war correspondence, Lee castigated the abolitionists for their political activity, and he never showed any qualms about the social order that he would later defend with arms. He also had a few slaves that he inherited as part of a will agreement, with provisions to emancipate those slaves. But in fact, he dragged his heels in complying with the terms of that will. And he never gave a second thought to the fact that his beloved Arlington mansion was run by slave labor.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2000s, Intelligence Report: Rebels With A Cause (2000)

War , Parting

“Some Confederate soldiers switched sides, beginning as early as 1862. When Sherman made his famous march to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah, his army actually grew in number, because thousands of white southerners volunteered along the way. Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of the Confederate army disappeared through desertion. Eighteen thousand slaves joined Sherman, so many that the army had to turn some away. Compare these facts with the portrait common in our textbooks of Sherman's marauders looting their way through a united south. The increasing ideological confusion in the Confederate states, coupled with the increasing strength of the United States, helps explains the Union victory… Many nations and people have continued to fight with far inferior means and weapons… The Confederacy's ideological contradictions were its gravest liabilities, ultimately causing its defeat.”

James W. Loewen book Lies My Teacher Told Me

As quoted in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong https://books.google.com/books?id=5m23RrMeLt4C&pg=PT225&dq=%22Twenty+Nigger+Law%22+loewen&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitwZHxq7fKAhXFdR4KHVgMDrYQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=%22Twenty%20Nigger%20Law%22%20loewen&f=false (2007), New York: New Press, pp. 225–226
2000s, 2007, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2007)

People , Way , Victory , Help

“The worker is no longer the slave to his reproductive urge. He is a free bargaining agent who enters the market to dispose of the one commodity he commands — labor power — and if he gets a rise in wages he will not be so foolish as to squander it in a self-defeating proliferation of his numbers.
The capitalist faces him in the arena. His greed and lust for wealth are caustically described in those chapters that leave the abstract world for a look into 1860 England. But it is worth noting that he is not money hungry from mere motives of rapacity; he is an owner-entrepreneur engaged in an endless race against his fellow owner-entrepreneurs; he must strive for accumulation, for in the competitive environment in which he operates, one accumulates or one gets accumulated.
The stage is set and the characters take their places. But now the first difficulty appears. How, asks Marx, can profits exist in such a situation? If everything sells for its exact value, then who gets an unearned increment?”

Robert L. Heilbroner book The Worldly Philosophers

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter VI, Karl Marx, p. 148

Money , World , Motivation , Appearance

“The worst offenses of slaves against the white men's code were rebellion and running away. Drunkenness, stealing, hiding out from work, personal filthiness, carelessness of property, fighting, and general brutality had various positions in the scale of misdemeanors. Negro preachers often bred discontent by their unnecessary restraint upon pleasure, and, if itinerants, had to be watched closely for abolitionist or seditious doctrines.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The Making of America (1986)

Men , Pleasure , Fight , Personality

“In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.”

John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women

Source: The Subjection of Women (1869), Ch. 1

Age , Sex , Question , Time

“In order for a slave--or, for that matter, a slaveholder--to become free, a series of successive perceptions must be realized. First, the person must perceive that the owners (and slaves) are merely human, that is, putting all rhetoric aside, that there exists a dichotomy of privilege and exploitation, and that the privilege is a result of exploitation. … The second realization is, once again, that the owners and slaves are merely human, meaning this time that the exploitation and consequent privilege are not inevitable, but the result of social arrangements and force (as well as a huge dollop of bad luck on the part of those enslaved). … The third realization is yet again that the owners are merely human, by which I now mean they are vulnerable. Wealth does not protect them.”

Derrick Jensen book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 63

Bad luck , Time , Success , Parting

“How can slaves be sent by Allah? You all have hairless faces, the mark of the bondman.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

“They [the slaves] have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—starved for freedom—fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants have been their historians!”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

Chapter VI http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abeslmca3t.html
1830s, An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833)

Freedom

“The answer, then, to the question of who freed the slaves is not the slaves, and not even (as Blight tries to temporize) both the slaves and Lincoln. It was Lincoln's task—and Lincoln did it. This may not work to promote anyone else's self-esteem, but it did wonders for providing freedom.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Letter (2010)

Question , Freedom

“The mathematician requires tact and good taste at every step of his work, and he has to learn to trust to his own instinct to distinguish between what is really worthy of his efforts and what is not; he must take care not to be the slave of his symbols, but always to have before his mind the realities which they merely serve to express. For these and other reasons it seems to me of the highest importance that a mathematician should be trained in no narrow school; a wide course of reading in the first few years of his mathematical study cannot fail to influence for good the character of the whole of his subsequent work”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 467 : On the importance of broad training

School , Mathematics , Reality , Effort

“His aunt drily remarked that, at this rate, he would soon get through all the sights; but she could not guess — having lived always in Washington — how little the sights of Washington had to do with its interest.

The boy could not have told her; he was nowhere near an understanding of himself. The more he was educated, the less he understood. Slavery struck him in the face; it was a nightmare; a horror; a crime; the sum of all wickedness! Contact made it only more repulsive. He wanted to escape, like the negroes, to free soil. Slave States were dirty, unkempt, poverty-stricken, ignorant, vicious! He had not a thought but repulsion for it; and yet the picture had another side. The May sunshine and shadow had something to do with it; the thickness of foliage and the heavy smells had more; the sense of atmosphere, almost new, had perhaps as much again; and the brooding indolence of a warm climate and a negro population hung in the atmosphere heavier than the catalpas. The impression was not simple, but the boy liked it: distinctly it remained on his mind as an attraction, almost obscuring Quincy itself. The want of barriers, of pavements, of forms; the looseness, the laziness; the indolent Southern drawl; the pigs in the streets; the negro babies and their mothers with bandanas; the freedom, openness, swagger, of nature and man, soothed his Johnson blood.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education , Boy , Understanding , Nature

“well boss
mehitabel the cat
has reappeared in her old
haunts with a
flock of kittens

archy she said to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens
i look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another
i am a dancer archy
and my only prayer
is to be allowed
to give my best to my art
but just as i feel
that i am succeeding
in my life work
along comes another batch
of these damned kittens
it is not archy
that i am shy on mother love
god knows i care for
the sweet little things
curse them
but am i never to be allowed
to live my own life
i have purposely avoided
matrimony in the interests
of the higher life
but i might just
as well have been a domestic
slave for all the freedom
i have gained
i hope none of them
gets run over by
an automobile
my heart would bleed
if anything happened
to them and i found it out
but it isn t fair archy
it isn t fair
these damned tom cats have all
the fun and freedom
if i was like some of these
green eyed feline vamps i know
i would simply walk out on the
bunch of them and
let them shift for themselves
but i am not that kind
archy i am full of mother love
my kindness has always
been my curse
a tender heart is the cross i bear
self sacrifice always and forever
is my motto damn them
i will make a home
for the sweet innocent
little things
unless of course providence
in his wisdom should remove
them they are living
just now in an abandoned
garbage can just behind
a made over stable in greenwich
village and if it rained
into the can before i could
get back and rescue them
i am afraid the little
dears might drown
it makes me shudder just
to think of it
of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyhow
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop them in myself
but a mother s love archy
is so unreasonable
something always prevents me
these terrible
conflicts are always
presenting themselves
to the artist
the eternal struggle
between art and life archy
is something fierce
yes something fierce
my what a dramatic
life i have lived
one moment up the next
moment down again
but always gay archy always gay
and always the lady too
in spite of hell
well boss it will
be interesting to note
just how mehitabel
works out her present problem
a dark mystery still broods
over the manner
in which the former
family of three kittens
disappeared
one day she was talking to me
of the kittens
and the next day when i asked
her about them
she said innocently
what kittens
interrogation point
and that was all
i could ever get out
of her on the subject
we had a heavy rain
right after she spoke to me
but probably that garbage can
leaks so the kittens
have not yet
been drowned”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

mehitabel and her kittens http://donmarquis.com/reading-room/kittens/
archy and mehitabel (1927)

Love , Life , Wisdom , God

“Since the light of God’s truth beamed upon my mind, I have become a friend of that religion which teaches us to pray for our enemies — which, instead of shooting balls into their hearts, loves them. I would not hurt a hair of a slaveholder’s head. I will tell you what else I would not do. I would not stand around the slave with my bayonet pointed at his breast, in order to keep him in the power of the slaveholder.”

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

Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (October 22, 1847), Delivered at Market Hall, New York City, New York.
1840s, Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (1847)

Love , God , Truth , Religion

“Since the creation of the world there has been no tyrant like Intemperance, and no slaves so cruelly treated as his.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

Vol. I, p. 268
William Lloyd Garrison 1805-1879 (1885)

World

“We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

Fight

“Swaraj means that we must live within ourselves, we must be self-contained. I tell you we are great slaves to-day. Our economic slavery is greater than our political slavery… From Manchester comes 60 crores rupees worth of cloth every year. You will not have to pay these 60 crores rupees which go out of India. If a householder works by Charkha for one o two hours a day at the end of the year he will find himself with all the necessaries of his family.”

Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party

Address delivered on 11th February 1921 at a meeting held in Maulana Mazhar-ul-Haq’s compound at Patna. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
1921

Family , Clothes

“The tendency was to sell families as units, if for no other reason [than] to keep the slaves contented. The gangs in transit were usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains. At the other extreme, when the Central of Georgia railroad company in 1858 equipped a Negro sleeping car to assist in the slave trade it set a standard not always maintained in a later generation. When on the block, the slave was as likely to hinder as to help in his sale. Some, out of a vain conceit in bringing a high price, would boast of their physical prowess, in which case an unwary purchaser would likely be cheated. Others would malinger, because of a grudge against owners or traders or in order to bring a low price and be put at less tiring labor. Dealers, also, adopted the tricks of horse traders to make their merchants more attractive -- the greasiest Negro was generally considered the healthiest.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The Making of America (1986)

Family , Cars , Sleep , Help

“Where charity keeps pace with grain, industry is blessed, but to slave to get, and keep it sordidly, is a sin against Providence, a vice in government and an injury to their neighbours.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

218
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part II

“The interest capitalistic inflation however is like a devouring fire which is not extinguished until it has consumed all the treasures of the world and made the whole of mankind interest-slaves of international finance—or until the interest slavery is broken.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

Source: The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation (1923), pp. 117-118

World

“Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines. They think, "By doing this, the machine will run faster. By doing this, the machine will run more effectively. By doing this, the machine will something something something." They are focusing on machines. But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the machines. We are the masters. They are the slaves.”

Yukihiro Matsumoto (1965) Japanese computer scientist

Yukihiro Matsumoto " The Philosophy of Ruby, A Conversation with Yukihiro Matsumoto, Part I http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby4.html" by Bill Venners on 2003-09-29 (Artima Developer).

People , Thinking

“This “sublime revenge” of ressentiment (in Nietzsche's words) has indeed played a creative role in the history of value systems. It is “sublime,” for the impulses of revenge against those who are strong, healthy, rich, or handsome now disappear entirely. Ressentiment has brought deliverance from the inner torment of these affects. Once the sense of values has shifted and the new judgments have spread, such people cease to be enviable, hateful, and worthy of revenge. They are unfortunate and to be pitied, for they are beset with “evils.” Their sight now awakens feelings of gentleness, pity, and commiseration. When the reversal of values comes to dominate accepted morality and is invested with the power of the ruling ethos, it is transmitted by tradition, suggestion, and education to those who are endowed with the seemingly devaluated qualities. They are struck with a “bad conscience” and secretly condemn themselves. The “slaves,” as Nietzsche says, infect the “masters.” Ressentiment man, on the other hand, now feels “good,” “pure,” and “human”—at least in the conscious layers of his mind. He is delivered from hatred, from the tormenting desire of an impossible revenge, though deep down his poisoned sense of life and the true values may still shine through the illusory ones. There is no more calumny, no more defamation of particular persons or things. The systematic perversion and reinterpretation of the values themselves is much more effective than the “slandering” of persons or the falsification of the world view could ever be."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Variant: The man of ressentiment cannot justify or even understand his own existence and sense of life in terms of positive values such as power, health, beauty, freedom, and independence. Weakness, fear, anxiety, and a slavish disposition prevent him from obtaining them. Therefore he comes to feel that “all this is vain anyway” and that salvation lies in the opposite phenomena: poverty, suffering, illness, and death. This “sublime revenge” of ressentiment (in Nietzsche’s words) has indeed played a creative role in the history of value systems. It is “sublime,” for the impulses of revenge against those who are strong, healthy, rich, or handsome now disappear entirely. Ressentiment has brought deliverance from the inner torment of these affects. Once the sense of values has shifted and the new judgments have spread, such people cease to been viable, hateful, and worthy of revenge. They are unfortunate and to be pitied, for they are beset with “evils.” Their sight now awakens feelings of gentleness, pity, and commiseration. When the reversal of values comes to dominate accepted morality and is invested with the power of the ruling ethos, it is transmitted by tradition, suggestion, and education to those who are endowed with the seemingly devaluated qualities. They are struck with a “bad conscience” and secretly condemn themselves. The “slaves,” as Nietzsche says, infect the “masters.” Ressentiment man, on the other hand, now feels “good,” “pure,” and “human”—at least in the conscious layers of his mind. He is delivered from hatred, from the tormenting desire of an impossible revenge, though deep down his poisoned sense of life and the true values may still shine through the illusory ones. There is no more calumny, no more defamation of particular persons or things. The systematic perversion and reinterpretation of the values themselves is much more effective than the “slandering” of persons or the falsification of the world view could ever be.
Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 76-77

Life , Hate , People , World

“Blue Monday how I hate Blue Monday
Got to work like a slave all day
Here come Tuesday, oh hard Tuesday
I'm so tired got no time to play”

Fats Domino (1928–2017) American R&B musician

Blue Monday (1954); the lyrics to the song are by Dave Bartholomew, with Domino later credited as co-writer for his musical revisions to the song in 1956.
Misattributed

Hate , Time

“They were more than kings, now they are less than slaves.”

Pierre Corneille Sertorius

Ils etaient plus que rois; ils sont moindres qu'esclaves.
Sertorius, act III, scene i
Sertorius describes Roman citizens after they had fallen under tyranny.
Sertorius (1662)

“2445. He's a Slave, that cannot command himself.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Let us say that the freedom exists, but it is limited to the one unique act of choosing the profession. Afterward all freedom is over. When he begins his studies at the university, the doctor, lawyer, or engineer is forced into an extremely rigid curriculum which ends with a series of examinations. If he passes them, he receives his license and can thereafter pursue his profession in seeming freedom. But in doing so he becomes the slave of base powers; he is dependent on success, on money, on his ambition, his hunger for fame, on whether or not people like him. He must submit to elections, must earn money, must take part in the ruthless competition of castes, families, political parties, newspapers. In return he has the freedom to become successful and well-to-do, and to be hated by the unsuccessful, or vice versa.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Money , Hunger , Hate , People

“The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

August 22
Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)

“Fellow citizens, we may now say that the past, with all its wealth of glorious associations, is secure. The air is filled with brightness; the horizon is aglow with hope. The future is full of magnificent possibilities. But God has committed to us a trust which we must not, we dare not overlook. By the dispensation of his Providence, the chains have been stricken from four millions of the inhabitants of this Republic, and he has shown us the truth of that early utterance of Abraham Lincoln's, 'This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

God , Truth , World , Hope

“I have just two hands
and the feeling of the world,
but I'm teeming with slaves,
my memories are streaming
and my body yields
at the crossroads of love.”

Carlos Drummond de Andrade book Sentimento do mundo

Tenho apenas duas mãos
e o sentimento do mundo,
mas estou cheio de escravos,
minhas lembranças escorrem
e o corpo transige
na confluência do amor.
"Sentimento do mundo" ["Feeling of the World"]
Sentimento do mundo [Feeling of the World] (1940)

Love , World , Feeling , Memory

“I know this of my own knowledge, because when the garrison of Baton Rouge was sent to the Rio Grande to assist in protecting that frontier against the guerrilla Cortina, who had cause of offense against the Texan people, Governor Moore made strong complaints and demanded a new garrison for Baton Rouge, alleging as a reason that it was not prudent to have so much material of war in a parish where there were 20,000 slaves and less than 5,000 whites, and very shortly after this he and Bragg, backed by the militia of New Orleans, made 'prisoners of war' of that very garrison, sent there at their own request.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

1860s, 1864, Letter to James Guthrie (August 1864)

War , People , Knowledge , Strong

“Christian quotes what the Old Virginians said against slavery. True; but why didn't he quote what the modern Virginians said in favor of it? Mason, Hunter, Wise, etc. Why didn't he state that a Virginia senator, Mason, was the author of the Fugitive Slave Law, and why didn't he quote The Virginia Code that made it a crime to speak against slavery?”

John S. Mosby (1833–1916) Confederate Army officer

Letter to Samuel "Sam" Chapman (June 1907)

Law , Quotes

“The augmentation of slaves weakens the states; and such a trade is diabolical in itself, and disgraceful to mankind.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

June 17
Addresses to the Virginia Ratifying Convention (1788)

“I am persuaded that the rights of woman, like the rights of slaves, need only be examined to be understood and asserted.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter 3 (July 1837).
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837)

“Yeah, I’d like to comment. In the first place, the idea that the federal government in 1860 should have offered to buy the slaves is a political absurdity. Any claim by Lincoln or his party of any jurisdiction over slavery in the states would have been regarded, and justly regarded, as completely unconstitutional, and advocating the overthrow of the Constitution.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A

Idea

“The Hindu happens to be a (wretched) slave in all respects.”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

quoted in Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Nuh Siphir

“We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Attributed by Murrow to an unnamed farmer in "Harvest of Shame", CBS Reports (24 November 1960)
Misattributed

“And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped God who sits on the throne and said: “Amen! Praise Jah!” Also, a voice came from the throne and said: “Be praising our God, all you his slaves, who fear him, the small ones and the great.””

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

Revelation 19: 4-5 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/revelation/19/, NWT
Revelation

God , Fear

“The weak in mind or body require guidance, support and protection; they must obey and work for those who protect and guide them—they have a natural right to guardians, committees, teachers or masters. Nature has made them slaves, all that law and government can do, is to regulate, modify and mitigate their slavery.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 178

Law , Support , Nature , Teachers

“The greatest blow for freedom that was ever struck in the world's history, perhaps, was when Abraham Lincoln decided that the slaves of the South were to be free and he freed them. The South collapsed. The gentlemen who could spend their time fighting, sure of supplies from slave-tended lands, began to starve and go ragged. Their homes began to fall into ruin and their families to be hungry. Their morale was broken. The war was really won by the pen upon the paper which wrote these words, "are and henceforward shall be free."”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: What America Means to Me (1943), p. 193

War , World , Family , Home

“The series of events leading up to the formation of the biblical community and its religion apparently began unexpectedly. Moses killed an Egyptian overseer who was beating one of the slaves. It is difficult to imagine this being a fictional invention, especially since the biblical writers never chose to comment on this noteworthy aspect of the protagonist’s dark past. When Moses later tried to intervene between two quarreling slaves, one of them responded, “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:11-15). Is the monopoly of force — the ability to coerce other human beings — truly the ultimate basis of social authority? If it seems undesirable to ground social authority on something that essentially boils down to the superior ability to commit murder, then what is the alternative?”

George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016) American academic

Ancient Israel’s Faith and History: An Introduction the Bible in Context (2001)

Religion , Imagination , Communication , Past

“Or, to go a step further, let us glance at what science has done to establish rational foundations for physical and moral health. Science tells us how we ought to live in order to preserve the health of our own bodies, how to maintain in good conditions of existence the crowded masses of our population. But does not all the vast amount of work done in these two directions remain a dead letter in our books? We know it does. And why? Because science today exists only for a handful of privileged persons, because social inequality which divides society into two classes — the wage-slaves and the grabbers of capital — renders all its teachings as to the conditions of a rational existence only the bitterest irony to nine-tenths of mankind.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

An Appeal to the Young (1880)

Health , Books , Science , Personality

“It was once said by Abraham Lincoln that this Republic could not long endure half slave and half free; and the same may be said with even more truth of the black citizens of this country. They cannot remain half slave and half free. They must be one thing or the other. And this brings me to consider the alternative now presented between slavery and freedom in this country. From my outlook, I am free to affirm that I see nothing for the negro of the South but a condition of absolute freedom, or of absolute slavery. I see no half-way place for him. One or the other of these conditions is to solve the so-called negro problem. There are forces at work in both of these directions, and for the present that which aims at the re-enslavement of the negro seems to have the advantage. Let it be remembered that the labor of the negro is his only capital. Take this from him, and he dies from starvation. The present mode of obtaining his labor in the South gives the old master-class a complete mastery over him. I showed this in my last annual celebration address, and I need not go into it here. The payment of the negro by orders on stores, where the storekeeper controls price, quality, and quantity, and is subject to no competition, so that the negro must buy there and nowhere else–an arrangement by which the negro never has a dollar to lay by, and can be kept in debt to his employer, year in and year out–puts him completely at the mercy of the old master-class. He who could say to the negro, when a slave, you shall work for me or be whipped to death, can now say to him with equal emphasis, you shall work for me, or I will starve you to death… This is the plain, matter-of-fact, and unexaggerated condition of the plantation negro in the Southern States today.”

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

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Death , Truth , Way , Problem

“The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night (1885) When it was the Three Hundred and Sixtieth Night, footnote

“'Atiyya ibn 'Urwa as-Sa'di, the Companion, said, "The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, 'The slave [of Allah] will not achieve the status of being one of the Godfearing until he leaves what does not concern him out of consideration for what does concern him."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 596
Sunni Hadith

Peace

“The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is this stuff [indicating her body], this flesh and blood and bone and all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the body of this death.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The She-Ancient, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Death , Dreams

“Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free!
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 40.

Country

“A despotic power makes slaves.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

“I'll be dead and you'll think about this day and wonder which of us was more the slave, you or me!”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Thinking , Dead

“Ibn-ul-Asir says that Qutbuddin Aibak made “war against the provinces of Hind… He killed many, and returned home with prisoners and booty.” In Banaras, according to the same authority, Muhammad Ghauri’s slaughter of the Hindus was immense. “None was spared except women and children." No wonder that slaves began to fill the households of every Turk from the very beginning of Muslim rule in India. Fakhr-i-Mudabbir informs us that as a result of the Muslim achievements under Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak, “even a poor householder (or soldier) who did not possess a single slave before became the owner of numerous slaves of all description (jauq jauq ghulam har jins)…””

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7 (quoting Kamil-ut-Tawarikh, E and D, II, p. 250-1; Tarikh-i-Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah, p. 20.)

Women , War , Children , Home

“Until recently baby production was largely dependent on slave labour; as soon as women are allowed to answer the question "Would you like to squeeze as many objects the size of a watermelon out of your body as it takes to kill you?" they generally answer "No, thank you." This leads to falling birthrates everywhere women are not kept enslaved and ignorant of the alternatives.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

2000s

Women , Question , Baby , Dependency

“Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable. — We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775); Jefferson composed the first draft of this document, but the final work was done by John Dickinson, working with his original draft. Full text online http://www.nationalcenter.org/1775DeclarationofArms.html
1770s

God , World , Exercises , Heart

“Now, Lincoln said to Douglas, if you accept that Taney’s opinion that slavery is expressly affirmed in the Constitution is true, then you are under an obligation to give the slave owners the implementation of this right.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

“Priests, theologians, have taken advantage of women—of their gentleness—their love of approbation. They have lived upon their hopes and fears. Like vampires, they have sucked their blood. They have made them responsible for the sins of the world. They have taught them the slave virtues—meekness, humility—implicit obedience. They have fed their minds with mistakes, mysteries and absurdities. They have endeavored to weaken and shrivel their brains, until, to them, there would be no possible connection between evidence and belief—between fact and faith.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Thanksgiving Sermon (1897)

Love , Women , World , Fear

“The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

“It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Abolition of Man

The Abolition of Man (1943)

Soul

“If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. III : A Controversy; Mrs. Markham to Helen

Life , Home , Boy

“The status of women up to now has been compared to that of a slave; women have been tied to the home, and only socialism can save them from this. They will only be completely emancipated when we change from small-scale individual farming to collective farming and collective working of the land.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 28, pp. 180–182.
Collected Works

Women , Home , Change

“I did not hate the author of my misfortunes — truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved — and this resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me — to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer.”

William Godwin book Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams

Caleb Williams (1794)

Hate , Fate , Truth , Justice

“Remember that Moses led his people through the desert for forty years, and that after twenty years people began to complain… they told Moses that life in the desert was too difficult, and that at least while they were slaves they had had food and water and places to sleep. Moses's friends asked him how long he thought people would be complaining like this, and he replied, "Until the last person born under slavery has died". Our situation is very similar. The psychological gap between eastern and western Germany will last for at least a generation, or perhaps until the last person born under Communism has passed away.”

Lothar de Maizière (1940) German politician

As quoted in "A Wall of Resentment Now Divides Germany" http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/14/world/five-years-later-eastern-europe-post-communism-special-report-wall-resentment.html?pagewanted=all (14 October 1994), by Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, New York

Life , People , Food , Communication

“Under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slave-holders three months' grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States.”

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

Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Hate , Age , Idea , Time

“Philosophy is antipoetic. Philosophize about mankind and you brush aside individual uniqueness, which a poet cannot do without self-damage. Unless, for a start, he has a strong personal rhythm to vary his metrics, he is nothing. Poets mistrust philosophy. They know that once the heads are counted, each owner of a head loses his personal identity and becomes a number in some government scheme: if not as a slave or serf, at least as a party to the device of majority voting, which smothers personal views.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The Case for Xanthippe" in The Crane Bag (1969).
General sources

Strong , Personality

“I didn’t know what to expect when I made my first convention appearance (in Las Vegas in 2005). I was blown away by the loyalty and knowledge of the fans. They attend these events annually and know more about our characters than we do. Some of them were even dressed in costumes, even as Orion slaves painted in green. Star Trek fans are the most loyal fans.”

Menina Fortunato (1980) Canadian actress

Enterprise's Orion Slave Girls https://www.startrek.com/article/exclusive-interview-enterprises-orion-slave-girls (March 16, 2016)

Star , Knowledge , Appearance , Painting

“At the end of the Civil War, the "Slave Power" had been destroyed, free-labor Republicanism was triumphant, and the freed slave was poised on the verge of assuming an equal place in American society with every other citizen. Fifteen years later, the one-time slaveholders were back in control of the South, free-labor Republicanism was coping with the first stresses of mass industrialization in its own Northern backyard, and the freedmen were consigned to an economic peonage that offered little practical improvement on enslavement. It began to seem that a great opportunity had been bobbled away.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Sara Gabbard (2018)

War , Time

“On the king’s gate the moss grew gray;
The king came not. They called him dead
And made his eldest son one day
Slave in his father’s stead.”

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) Novelist, poet, writer, activist

Coronation.

Dead

“It is not the business of socialists to help the younger and stronger robbers. Socialists must take advantage of the struggle between the robbers to overthrow all of them. To be able to do this, socialists must first of all tell the people the truth, namely, that this war is, in three respects, a war between slave-holders with the aim of consolidating slavery.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Socialism and War (1914), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

War , People , Truth , Business

“In the heartlands of Islam, from Saudi mansions to ISIS dungeons, there are still slaves, laboring, beaten, bought, sold, raped and disposed of in Mohammed's name.”

Louie Gohmert (1953) American politician

Speech to the United States House of Representatives (July 2015)

“We do not remember that our people - during our sad but proud Romanian history - at any time tolerated being dishonoured. Our fields are full of the dead, but not of cowards. Today we are free men with the consciousness of our rights. Slaves we are not and never were. We receive death, but not humiliation. Rest assured, we have sufficient moral strength left to find an honourable exit from a life we cannot support without honour and dignity.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

Life , Death , Men , People

“Your armed forces have toppled the reactionary, backward and corrupt regime. With one strike your heroic army has toppled idols and destroyed them in one of Providence's fateful moments. As of now Libya shall be free and sovereign, a republic under the name of the Libyan Arab Republic. No oppressed or deceived or wronged, no master and no slave; but free brothers in a society over which, God willing, shall flutter the banner of brotherhood and equality. And thus shall we build glory, revive heritage and avenge a wounded dignity. Sons of the Bedouins, sons of the desert, sons of the ancient cities, sons of the countryside, sons of the villages, the hour of work has struck and so let us forge ahead.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Radio broadcast from Benghazi (1 September 1969), quoted in The Libyan Revolution: Its Origins and Legacy (2009) by Nicholas Hagger
Speeches

God , Fate

“That a majority of women do not wish for any important change in their social and civil condition, merely proves that they are the unreflecting slaves of custom.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

Letter to the Advocates of Woman’s Suffrage (1870).
1870s

Women , Change

“Even the slave owner is restricted in his ability to manipulate his labor supply, for he must protect his investment in slaves by feeding them during times when they do not labor. In contrast, capitalist entrepreneurs can hire and fire laborers or very their wages in response to changing circumstances.”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 12 The New Laborers, p. 356.

Change , Time

“As an example, the exploits of one of Jahangir’s commanders, Abdullah Khan Uzbeg Firoz Jung, can provide an idea of the excessive cruelty perpetrated by the government. Peter Mundy, who travelled from Agra to Patna in 1632 saw, during his four days’ journey, 200 minars (pillars) on which a total of about 7000 heads were fixed with mortar. On his way back four months later, he noticed that meanwhile another 60 minars with between 2000 and 2400 heads had been added and that the erection of new ones had not yet stopped. Abdullah Khan’s force of 12,000 horse and 20,000 foot destroyed, in the Kalpi-Kanauj area, all towns, took all their goods, their wives and children as slaves and beheaded and ‘immortered’ the chiefest of their men.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Mundy, Travels, II, pp. 90, 185, 186. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7
Generals under the command of Jahangir

Men , Children , Way , Travel

“He [Jesus] claims that not the observance of outer civil or statutory churchly duties but the pure moral disposition of the heart alone can make man well-pleasing to God (Matthew V, 20-48); … that injury done one’s neighbor can be repaired only through satisfaction rendered to the neighbor himself, not through acts of divine worship (V, 24). Thus, he says, does he intend to do full justice to the Jewish law (V, 17); whence it is obvious that not scriptural scholarship but the pure religion of reason must be the law’s interpreter, for taken according to the letter, it allowed the very opposite of all this. Furthermore, he does not leave unnoticed, in his designations of the strait gate and the narrow way, the misconstruction of the law which men allow themselves in order to evade their true moral duty, holding themselves immune through having fulfilled their churchly duty (VII, 13). He further requires of these pure dispositions that they manifest themselves also in works (VII, 16) and, on the other hand, denies the insidious hope of those who imagine that, through invocation and praise of the Supreme Lawgiver in the person of His envoy, they will make up for their lack of good works and ingratiate themselves into favor (VII, 21). Regarding these works he declares that they ought to be performed publicly, as an example for imitation (V, 16), and in a cheerful mood, not as actions extorted from slaves (VI, 16); and that thus, from a small beginning in the sharing and spreading of such dispositions, religion, like a grain of seed in good soil, or a ferment of goodness, would gradually, through its inner power, grow into a kingdom of God (XIII, 31-33).”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a natural religion”
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

Men , God , Religion , Justice

“Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?

And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times ?

In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?

Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them?

Over whom did the Caesars triumph?

Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?

Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?

Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep?

Frederick the Second won the Seven Years' War.
Who else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?

Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.

So many questions.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Questions from a worker who reads" [Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters] (1935) from The Svendborg Poems (1939); trans. Michael Hamburger in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 252
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

War , Books , Question , Time

“Tsars and slaves, the intelligent and the obtuse, publicans and pharisees all have an identical legal and moral right to honor the memory of the deceased as they see fit, without regard for anyone else’s opinion and without the fear of hindering one another.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to K.S. Barantsevich (March 30, 1888)
Letters

Fear , Intelligence , Memory

“[The opposition to the Reform Bill of 1866 was directed] against the admission of any portion of the working men to the suffrage. The Tory party, and those from the Liberal ranks who join it, are animated by an unchangeable hostility to any Bill which gives the franchise to the working men. They object to any transfer of power from those who now possess it, and they object to share their power with any increased number of their countrymen who form the working class. They regard the workmen here as the southern planter regards the negroes who were so lately his slaves. They can no longer be bought or sold; so far they are free men. They may work and pay taxes; but they must not vote. They must obey the laws, but must have no share in selecting the men who are to make them. The future position of the millions of working men in the United Kingdom is now determined, if the opposition of the Tory party is to prevail—it is precisely that fixed by the southern planter for the negro. Millions of workmen will bear this in mind; they will now know the point or the gulf which separates one party from the other in the House of Commons.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Public letter (25 March 1866), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 351-352.
1860s

Men , Hostility , Law , Future

“Art should never be a slave to commerce, but for all working artists that's exactly what it must be.”

Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964) writer

31 January 2005
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2005

Art

“John Randolph had only been a Senator for a few days when he gave an extraordinary speech denouncing John Quincy Adams. 'It is my duty,' said Randolph, 'to leave nothing undone that I may lawfully do, to pull down this administration…. They who, from indifference, or with their eyes open, persist in hugging the traitor to their bosom, deserve to be insulted… deserve to be slaves, with no other music to soothe them but the clank of the chains which they have put on themselves and given to their offspring.' John Randolph said this in 1826. This was a time, writes de Tocqueville, when the presidency was almost invisible. If we cannot say this and more today, when the presidency is dictator to the world, we are not authentic conservatives and libertarians. Indeed, we are not free men.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

6 October 1996 "Down With the Presidency"
1990s

Men , World , Music , Time

“Be your money's master, not its slave.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 657
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Money

“News came from Malwa that Wazir Khan had sent Gada Beg, a slave, with 400 troopers, to destroy all temples around Ujjain' A Rawat of the place resisted and slew Gada Beg with 121 of his men (1670).”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Akhbarat, cited in Sarkar, Jadu Nath, History of Aurangzeb,Volume III, Calcutta, 1972 Impression. p. 186-189., quoted in part in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1670s

Men

“I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realised that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Interview in the San Francisco Examiner (26 August 1928)

Life , Men , Religion , Soul

“These savages and their false gods! I grow weary of them. Yet they are necessary; the priests and the gods of slaves always fight on the side of the Masters. It is a rule of nature.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Sixth Column

Source: Sixth Column (1949; originally serialized in 1941), Chapter 5 (p. 62)

God , Nature , Fight , Falseness

“The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don’t adjust! Revolt against the reality!”

Mordechai Anielewicz (1919–1943) Leader of the Jewish Combat Organization

The last letter from Mordecai Anielewicz , April 23 1943, written to Yitzhak Cukierman. [M.Kann], Na oczach swiata, ("In The Eyes of the World"), Zamosc, 1932 [i.e. Warszawa, 1943], pp. 33-34.

Soul , Reality , Evil

“Now heaven be thanked, I am out of love again!
I have been long a slave, and now am free;”

Jan Struther (1901–1953) British writer

FREEDOM, BETSINDA DANCES AND OTHER POEMS

Love

“The last 20 years have· seen an enormous growth of institutions devoted to anthropological enterprises, membership within the discipline, and students, text books, and paraphernalia. From a tiny scholarly group that could easily be fitted into a couple of buses, and most of whom knew each other, we have grown into a group of tremendous, anonymous milling crowds, meeting at large hotels where there are so many sessions that people do well to find those of their colleagues who are interested in the same specialty. Today we look something like the other social science disciplines, suffering some of the same malaise, and becoming cynical about slave markets and worried when grants and jobs seem to be declining.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Changing Styles of Anthropological Work, 1973, p. 1

People , Books , Suffering , Science

“The old notion that the savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a visible master, but to the past, to the spirits of his dead forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and rule him with a rod of iron.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 3, Sympathetic Magic (See also: the Noble savage).

Death , Truth , Birth , Past

“The upshot is that the values and goals which provided a unifying center for previous centuries in the modern period no longer are cogent. We have not yet found the new center which will enable us to choose our goals constructively, and thus to overcome the painful bewilderment and anxiety of not knowing which way to move. Another root of our malady is our loss of the sense of the worth and dignity of the human being. Nietzsche predicted this when he pointed out that the individual was being swallowed up in the herd, and that we were living by a "slave-morality." Marx also predicted it when he proclaimed that modern man was being "de-humanized," and Kafka showed in his amazing stories how people literally can lose their identify as persons.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Man’s Search for Himself (1953), p. 49

Pain , People , Way , Sense

“Slavery existed all over the world. The Egyptians had slaves. The Chinese had slaves. The Africans did. American Indians had slaves long before Columbus. And tragically, slavery continues today in many countries. What's uniquely Western is the abolition of slavery. And what's uniquely American is the fighting of a great war to end it.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Documentary films, America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014)

War , World , Fight , Country

“In the middle of the month of Safar, 593 H. (Jan. 1197), the world-conquering Khusru departed from Ajmir, and with every description of force turned his face towards the annihilation of the Rai of Nahrwala…. A severe action ensued from dawn to mid-day when 'the army of idolatry and damnation turned its back in flight from the line of battle. Most of their leaders were taken prisoners, and nearly fifty thousand infidels were despatched to hell by the sword, and from the heaps of the slain, the hills and the plains became of one level… More than twenty thousand slaves, and twenty elephants, and cattle and arms beyond all calculation, fell into the hands of victors.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

You would have thought that the treasures of the kings of all the inhabited world had come into their possession'
Gujarat. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 228-230. https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036729#page/n5/mode/2up Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

World , Hell

Quotes about slave page 4

Quotes about slave
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