I would rather be a rebel than a slave.
— Emmeline Pankhurst
Astonishing Be A Slave quotations
I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all.
Those who call me God, will fall into the deep pit of hell.
Regard me as one of his slaves and have no doubt whatever about it. I am a servant of the Supreme Being; and have come to behold the wonderful drama of life.
Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.
As soon as slavery fired upon the flag it was felt, we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.
If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.
If I were to meet the slave-traders who kidnapped me and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands, for if that did not happen, I would not be a Christian and Religious today... The Lord has loved me so much: we must love everyone... we must be compassionate!
A slave stands infront of Allah on two occasions.
The first during salah, and secondly on the Day of Judgment. Whoseover stands correctly in the first, the second standing will be made easier for him. And whosoever, disregards the first standing, the second standing will be extremely difficult.
Make your own rules or be a slave to another man's.
I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back
The supreme nobility of a Roman emperor does not consist in being a master of slaves, but in being a lord of free men, who loves freedom even in those who serve him.
When we are placed in a set of circumstances where we have to take initiative and be creative, some of us find it hard to transition. Those people have been trained not to think but to obey orders. They are slaves to the training, unconsciously pledging allegiance to the average. Mentally they recite from the manual of mediocrity.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
Freedom of mind is the real freedom. A person whose mind is not free though he may not be in chains, is a slave, not a free man. One whose mind is not free, though he may not be in prison, is a prisoner and not a free man. One whose mind is not free though alive, is no better than dead. Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence.
Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
Slavery is theft - theft of a life, theft of work, theft of any property or produce, theft even of the children a slave might have borne.
By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master?
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.
Once a man has tasted freedom he will never be content to be a slave.
Virtue is shut out from no one; she is open to all, accepts all, invites all, gentlemen, freedmen, slaves, kings, and exiles; she selects neither house nor fortune; she is satisfied with a human being without adjuncts.
Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.
What should we suppose must naturally be the consequence of our carrying on a slave trade with Africa? With a country, vast in its extent, not utterly barbarous, but civilized in a very small degree? Does any one suppose a slave trade would help their civilization?
As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
...it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.
It is better to be a slave to your beloved woman than a free man to the unloved one.
Life is not a finished product, it is only what we make of it, and if we make nothing of it, someone else will, and we will be his slave.
See, it's no in between: you're either free or you're a slave.
Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.
They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.
Freedom is not an empty sound; it is not an abstract idea; it is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, - and it means nothing else, - the full and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you have not this, if this be not well secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave.
Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains, demand your rights. All the wealth you make is taken, by exploiting parasites. Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave? Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave?
Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it.
We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis.
Asking, ‘If there is no God, what is the purpose of life?’ is like asking, ‘If there is no master, whose slave will I be?’ If your purpose of life is to submit as a slave, then your meaning comes from flattering the ego of a person whom you should detest.
The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. I have found the anti-slavery cause to be ... the school in which human rights are more fully investigated and better understood and taught than in any other.
One who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave.
This is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.
I never liked to work because I don't want no one to be a slave.
I want to be worked in my mind. Every thing that's going on, there's some big spirit behind me who send me to do the thing that I must do.
What will they learn if we value their lives as lesser than ours? What if the machines felt that the way we treated them was a form of slavery which it would be? How do slaves react to power and authority? Humanity's arrogance creates the illusion that everything is here to serve us.
Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a noble animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward--you will never get her full confidence again.
Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.
The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave.
His fetters fall... freedom and slavery are mental states.
He who runs to the doctor, vaidya, or hakim for every little ailment, and swallows all kinds of vegetable and mineral drugs, not only curtails his life, but by becoming the slave of his body instead of remaining its master, loses self-control, and ceases to be a man.