127 Abolishing Slavery Quotes

Following is our list of abolishing slavery quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about abolition of slavery.

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Famous Abolishing Slavery Quotes

So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. — Robert E. Lee

Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery! — John Brown

Among the expected glories of the Constitution, next to the abolition of Slavery was that of Rum. — George Clymer

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery. — Maya Angelou

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. — Abraham Lincoln

There must be no compromise with slavery - none whatever. Nothing is gained, everything is lost, by subordinating principle to expedience. — William Lloyd Garrison

From that date the abandonment of the older State proceeded with a rapidity never before known, and with it grew the domestic slave trade and the pro-slavery feeling. — Henry Charles Carey

Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important one to you, and that is, what shall be done with the free negro? — Stephen Douglas

If We allow Slaves, we act against the very Principles by which we associated together, which was to relieve the distressed. — James Oglethorpe

Slavery is an obscenity. It is not just stealing someone's labor; it is the theft of an entire life. — Kevin Bales

Women will be no longer made the slaves of, or dependent upon men ... They will be equal in education, rights, privileges and personal liberty. — Robert Owen

Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery. — Philip Wollen

God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil ... and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution. — Millard Fillmore

...it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners (morality). — William Wilberforce

Short Abolishing Slavery Quotes

  • Abolish the Loyal League and the Ku Klux Klan; let us come together and stand together. — Nathan Bedford Forrest
  • Every man knows that slavery is a curse. Whoever denies this, his lips libel his heart. — Theodore Dwight Weld
  • If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. — Abraham Lincoln
  • A toleration of slavery is, in effect, a toleration of inhumanity. — Granville Sharp
  • Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse! — Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • If slavery isn’t wrong, nothing’s wrong. — American Proverbs
  • Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. — Herbert Marcuse
Abolishing slavery quote I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.
I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

Stop Slavery Quotes

I Became a free woman when I decided to stop dreaming, freedom that is waiting for nothing .. and anticipation is a state of slavery — Ahlam Mosteghanemi

The black family unit that had survived 150 years of slavery was decimated in less than 30 years by welfare payments that stopped if the family structure remained intact. — Larry Burkett

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, None but ourselves can free our minds. Have no fear for atomic energy, 'Cause none of them can stop the time. — Bob Marley

If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned tho' we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Midnight Special on a sabre track movering movering, first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah. — Robert Hayden

I stopped loving my father a long time ago. What remained was the slavery to a pattern. — Anais Nin

Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do. — Ingrid Newkirk

It would seem that man was born a slave, and that slavery is his natural condition. At the same time nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature. — Simone Weil

I think many Dutch just don't know the history of Black Pete, that he is rooted in slavery, and how he was used to dehumanize a race of people. Once they realize this, many stop using this character, but those who continue are either in denial, insensitive or actually racists. — Roger Ross Williams

Abolition Of Slavery Quotes

You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know. — William Wilberforce

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave. — Frederick Douglass

I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery. — George Washington

There is no justification for the common claim that Christianity was responsible for the abolition of slavery. The Negro slave trade - a far more infamous practice than slavery in the ancient world - was initiated, carried on and defended by Christian men in Christian countries. — Margaret E. Knight

It is over one hundred years since the abolition of slavery. The Negro people in the United States have taken plenty and they have reached a stage where they have decided that they are not going to take any more. — C. L. R. James

We must show new energy in fighting back an old evil. Nearly two centuries after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and more than a century after slavery was officially ended in its last strongholds, the trade in human beings for any purpose must not be allowed to thrive in our time. — George W. Bush

As to a thorough eradication of prostitution, nothing can accomplish that save a complete transvaluation of all accepted values--especially the moral ones--coupled with the abolition of industrial slavery. — Emma Goldman

Recognition of the modes of existence of technical objects must be the result of philosophic consideration; what philosophy has to achieve in this respect is analogous to what the abolition of slavery achieved in affirming the worth of the individual human being. — Gilbert Simondon

It was a marvel, an enigma in abolition latitudes, that the slaves did not rise en-masse, at the beginning of hostilities. — Rebecca Latimer Felton

Abolition Quotes

So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition. — William Wilberforce

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion. — Karl Marx

The Curse of poverty has no justification in our age...The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions! — Peter Kropotkin

I advocate revolutionary changes...an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty — Assata Shakur

It is time for the rest of the world to join ... in demanding that ALL the nuclear weapons states -including Israel, India and Pakistan, but above all the US and Russia - negotiate concrete steps on a definite time-table toward the global, inspected abolition of nuclear weapons. — Daniel Ellsberg

The abolition of the class struggle does not mean the abolition of the need to struggle as a principle of development. — Antonio Gramsci

We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down. — Angelina Grimke

I don't want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can't understand why a country [USA] that's so committed to human rights doesn't find the death penalty an obscenity. — Desmond Tutu

The abolition of the death penalty is making us a civilized society. It shows we actually do mean business when we say we have reverence for life. — Desmond Tutu

Abolitionist Quotes

I feel safe even in the midst of my enemies; for the truth is powerful and will prevail. — Sojourner Truth

You [men] are our protectors, is not true; for if you were, who would there be to protect us from? — Mary Edwards Walker

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

If, while I hear the wild shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth, am I not guilty? — Lucy Stone

Nowhere is wisdom more necessary than in the guidance of charitable impulses. Meaning well is only half our duty; Thinking right is the other, and equally important, half. — Samuel Gridley Howe

If I had to write down the most important people in the history of this planet, No.1 would be (abolitionist) John Brown. Why? Because he's a white man who said he would die for the cause, because they could take him, but they weren't going to take his grandchildren. That brother was beautiful. — Dick Gregory

In such a condition of affairs, the practical difference between the abolitionist and the sympathizer, to the man who lost his slave and could not recover it, was very nebulous. — John Sergeant Wise

Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties. — Pete Seeger

That a majority of the Abolitionists in this place would patronize a free labor store, in preference to others, I do not doubt; but we do not muster money in Cincinnati. — Gamaliel Bailey

One can cite cases of Negroes who opposed emancipation and denounced the abolitionists. — Carter G. Woodson

Slavery Freedom Quotes

I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery. — Thomas Jefferson

Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery. — Lawana Blackwell

Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience. — John Locke

Freedom from slavery is achieved only when a person starts to feel and understand that he would prefer death to life as a slave. — Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

Of the people, by the people, for the people. — Sun Yat-sen

Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative. — Paul Robeson

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. - Bob Marley

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. — Bob Marley

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. - George Orwell

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. — George Orwell

I love the smell of Waffle House; it's the smell of freedom, being on the open road and knowing that ninety percent of the people eating around you are also on that road. Truck driver's, road-trippers, hangovers--those who don't live that monotonous life of society slavery. — J.A. Redmerski

Slave power crushes freedom of speech and of opinion. Slave power degrades labor. Slave power is arrogant, is jealous and intrusive, is cruel, is despotic, not only over the slave but over the community, the state. — Elizabeth Van Lew

Slavery Quotes

I would rather be a rebel than a slave. — Emmeline Pankhurst

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds! — Marcus Garvey

Capitalism is a development by refinement from feudalism, just as feudalism is development by refinement from slavery . Capitalism is but the gentlemen's method of slavery. — Kwame Nkrumah

My mission is to lead the country out of a bad situation of corruption, depression and slavery. After I rid the country of these vices, I will then organize and supervise a general election of a genuinely democratic civilian government. — Idi Amin

The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind — Marcus Garvey

America's greatest crime against the black man was not slavery or lynching, but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt. — Malcolm X

The greatest evil of American slavery was not involuntary servitude but rather the narrative of racial differences we created to legitimate slavery. Because we never dealt with that evil, I don't think slavery ended in 1865, it just evolved. — Bryan Stevenson

What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it's all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated! — Alex Jones

If you are not the victim, don't examine it entirely from your point of view because when YOU'RE not the victim, it becomes pretty easy to rationalize and excuse cruelty, injustice, inequality, slavery, and even murder. But when you're the victim, things look a lot differently from that angle. — Gary Yourofsky

Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole — Karl Marx

People Writing About Abolishing Slavery

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln
quotes on leadership, success and education

1225 20600
Read quotes by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe
quotes on slavery

186 1050
Read quotes by Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee
quotes on civil war, war and leadership

136 5350
Read quotes by John Brown

John Brown

30 700
Read quotes by Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou
quotes on life, success and education

1034 24554
Read quotes by William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison
quotes on slavery

38 847

More Abolishing Slavery Quotes

My crime is that I will not go with the multitude to do evil. My singularity is that when I say that freedom is of God and slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say. My fanaticism is that I insist on the American people abolishing slavery, or ceasing to prate on the rights of man. — William Lloyd Garrison

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hold a vision of this blue green planet, safe and in balance. At the end of the Fossil Fuel Era, we are emerging to a new reality. We are ready to make the next leap - as momentous as abolishing slavery or giving women the vote. — Elizabeth May

Christianity, by introducing into Europe the truest principles of humanity, universal benevolence, and brotherly love, had happily abolished civil slavery. Let us who profess the same religion practice its precepts... by agreeing to this duty. — Richard Henry Lee

Abolishing slavery leads to slaves without masters — George Fitzhugh

I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. — Patrick Henry

Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form. — Simone de Beauvoir

If you are going to abolish slavery, that opens up all these other questions: what system of labor is going to replace slave labor? What system of race relations is going to replace the race relations of slavery? Who is going to have power in the post-war South? The Emancipation Proclamation doesn't answer that question, but it throws [it] open. — Eric Foner

[T]he only thing the United States government ever did about slavery was to abolish it. Perhaps that was a mistake, but I do not feel inclined to apologize for it. — Jeff Cooper

No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man. — Thomas Huxley

Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking. — Nina Simone

Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freeman with votes in their hands are left without education. — Robert Charles Winthrop

Slavery can only be abolished by raising the character of the people who compose the nation; and that can be done only by showing them a higher one. — Maria Weston Chapman

All these cries of having "abolished slavery," of having "saved the country," of having "preserved the union," of establishing a "government of consent," and of "maintaining the national honor," are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats - so transparent that they ought to deceive no one. — Lysander Spooner

I speak on due consideration because Britain, France, and Mexico, have abolished slavery, and all other European states are preparing to abolish it as speedily as they can. — William H. Seward

For centuries, faith has helped us overcome problems and helped us work to achieve a more perfect union. It has inspired the many leaders who played a key role in abolishing slavery, protecting civil rights and, hopefully one day, becoming a nation where all life from conception to natural death is protected. — Marco Rubio

In reality, there are no biblical literalists, only selective literalists. By abolishing slavery and ordaining women, millions of Protestants have gone far beyond biblical literalism. It's time we did the same for homophobia. — William Sloane Coffin

I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law. — George Washington

Because of its exceptional capacity for self-criticism, the West took the initiative in abolishing slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in black Africa, where rival African tribes took black prisoners to be sold as slaves in the West. — Ibn Warraq

The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State. — Alexis de Tocqueville

Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it. — Thomas Szasz

The anti-slavery parties were also called spoilers, including the Republican party that went on not just to abolish slavery but they actually take over the Presidency moving very quickly from third-party into the Presidency. — Jill Stein

I have watched how steadily the general feeling, as shown at elections, has been rising against Slavery. What a proud thing for England if she is the first European nation which utterly abolishes it! I was told before leaving England that after living in slave countries all my opinions would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the negro character. — Charles Darwin

With their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their historical guilt on to someone else. — Andrew Roberts

I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery. — Patrick Henry

Should slavery be abolished there, (and it is an event, which, from these circumstances, we may reasonably expect to be produced in time) let it be remembered, that the Quakers will have had the merit of its abolition. — Thomas Clarkson

It is proclaimed by the great leaders of that party, by its political conventions, by its ministers of the Gospel, and by every other means they have of giving currency and importance to the declaration, that it is its mission to abolish slavery in the Union. — John H. Reagan

I feel like so much of what happened in the Delta over the decades since slavery was abolished seems much closer in the Delta, and maybe that's because sharecropping was a fairly recent phenomena. I feel like the past is closer and it bears even more heavily on the present there than it does in the rest of the state. — Jesmyn Ward

It's not that hard to say slavery is wrong after we've abolished it. — Shane Claiborne

As I said in one of my songs, we're still abolishing slavery, but nobody says it's a good thing. Nobody justifies it. — Dar Williams

Money is the measure of morality, and the success or failure of slavery as a money-making system, determines with many whether...it should be maintained or abolished. — Frederick Douglass

A slave- holder, who has decided to abolish slavery, does not consult his slaves whether they desire freedom or not. — Mahatma Gandhi

Racism is an effect of slavery, not the other way around. Once slavery was abolished, not only did racism not disappear, neither did the economic system it upheld. — Sarah Churchwell

Insofar as we may at all claim that slavery has been abolished today, we owe its abolition to the practical consequences of science — Albert Einstein

Most historians agree that Abraham Lincoln was the most important man to ever occupy the White House because he abolished slavery and kept the states united through a bloody civil war. — Kitty Kelley

The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, 'We already did. We have made the world new.' The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on. — Barbara Kingsolver

A [desire] to abolish slavery prevails in North America, many of the Pennsylvanians have set their slaves at liberty, and [Virginia legislators] have petitioned the King for permission to make a law for preventing the importation of more [slaves] into that colony. This request, however, will probably not be granted, as their former laws of that kind have always been repealed. — Benjamin Franklin

Slavery can never be abolished. — James Henry Hammond

I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District of Columbia. — Abraham Lincoln

The South was at the point where the scale was tipping against slavery. It was slowly dawning on the plantation owners that slave labor was not economic, besides being morally wrong. Slavery was destined to be abolished, whether for economic reasons or moral reasons matters not, but the international intriguers were not going to wait for voluntary abolition to rob them of their trump card. — John Coleman

The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general. — Friedrich Engels

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