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.

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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.

While we see the Course of the final abolition of human Slavery is onward, & we give it the aid of our prayers & all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in his hands who sees the end; who Chooses to work by slow influences; & with whom two thousand years are but as a Single day.

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

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

We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down.

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.

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.

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.

If democracy, in essence, means the abolition of class domination, then why should not a socialist minister charm the whole bourgeois world by orations on class collaboration?

The plane of consistency is the abolition of all metaphor; all that consists is Real.

The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary.

Even granting that we [humans] face greater harm than laboratory animals presently endure if ... research on these animals is stopped, the animal rights view will not be satisfied with anything less than total abolition.

Human beings are not property. On the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, let us reaffirm the inherent dignity of all men, women and children. And let us redouble our efforts so that the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - 'no one shall be held in slavery or servitude' - ring true.

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.

I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself... I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.

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.

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs).

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

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.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

This spirit of mob-law is becoming as great an evil as a servile war.

With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left.

... Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.

All good men wish the entire abolition of slavery, as soon as it can take place with safety to the public, and for the lasting good of the present wretched race of slaves. The only possible step that could be taken towards it by the convention was to fix a period after which they should not be imported.