Slavery is an institution that has been widely condemned for its inhumane nature. Throughout history, many individuals have expressed their disapproval of slavery through various quotes. These quotes often highlight the cruelty and injustice associated with the practice of enslaving human beings. They serve as reminders of the importance of equality and the need to eradicate such inhumane practices from society.
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. — Kevin Bales
Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden. — Desmond Tutu
Slavery is an obscenity. It is not just stealing someone's labor; it is the theft of an entire life. — Kevin Bales
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. — Euripides
Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do. — Derrick Bell
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
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. — Bob Marley
As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion. — Butterfly McQueen
Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave. — Leo Tolstoy
In truth there is only one freedom - the holy freedom of Christ, whereby He freed us from sin, from evil, from the devil. It binds us to God. All other freedoms are illusory, false, that is to say, they are all, in fact, slavery. — Justin Popovic
Carry out the republican principle of universal suffrage, or strike it from your banners and substitute 'Freedom and Power to one half of society, and Submission and Slavery to the other.' — Ernestine Rose
All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree. — Lysander Spooner
From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. — George Orwell
Frederick Douglas taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path. — Carl Sagan
Lincoln Slavery Quotes
I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600's. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican. — Marion Berry
Like Lincoln said: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," and I feel the same way about the leftist dismantling of the West. If that's not wrong, then nothing is wrong. — David Mamet
In our government-controlled schools we are taught that Lincoln was our greatest president because his war ended slavery and saved the Union. As usual, the other side of the story - the side that reflects poorly on the government - somehow gets lost. — Richard J. Maybury
Lincoln sees slavery in some ways as a theft of labor. A slave is a laborer who is being denied the fruits of his labor. — Eric Foner
Abraham Lincoln would have been happy to have solved the slavery problem by compensation - in fact, drew up a gradual, compensated emancipation plan as early as November, 1861 - but no slaveholders were willing to go along with it. — Allen C. Guelzo
Whatever Lincoln's racial views, which are not totally modern and egalitarian in many ways, he believes blacks should have this natural right to improve their condition in life and slavery denies that to them. — Eric Foner
The Republican Party, which John McCain led as our nominee in 2008, is going to become irrelevant if we become the party of intolerance and hate. The party founded by Abraham Lincoln was a party that fought slavery and intolerance at every level. — Ed Rollins
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
In history, she wasn't there while we reenacted the Lincoln-Douglas Debate, and Mr. Lee tried to make me argue the Pro-Slavery side, most likely as punishment for some future liberally minded paper I was bound to write. — Kami Garcia
Slavery Freedom Quotes
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
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
As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love. — Desmond Tutu
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
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
History has a long-range perspective. It ultimately passes stern judgment on tyrants and vindicates those who fought, suffered, were imprisoned, and died for human freedom, against political oppression and economic slavery. — Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.... The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance. — Alexis de Tocqueville
Abolition Of Slavery Quotes
Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery. — Maya Angelou
Among the expected glories of the Constitution, next to the abolition of Slavery was that of Rum. — George Clymer
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
Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery. — Philip Wollen
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
Modern Slavery Quotes
Nothing happens just because we are aware of modern day slavery, but nothing will ever happen until we are. — Sayings
The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery. — Upton Sinclair
Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic. — Thomas Sowell
Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt. — Ezra Pound
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight-of-hand that was ever invented. — Josiah Stamp
What if every church in America had a ministry to stand against modern slavery? — Dillon Burroughs
Modern capitalist nations are the fruit of a history of slavery, genocide, violence and exploitation every bit as abhorrent as Mao's China or Stalin's Soviet Union. — Terry Eagleton
People-trafficking is modern day slavery. There are more slaves today than there were at the height of the slave trade. — Ross Kemp
I am confident that we will one day end the scourge of modern slavery, because I believe in those committed to this issue. — Barack Obama
Abolishing Slavery Quotes
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
[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
Economic Slavery Quotes
I know that there are no limits to which the powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery — Mother Jones
Man's inhumanity to man is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep. — Alexander Berkman
The present age handed over the workers, each alone and defenseless, to the unbridled greed of competitors... so that a very few and exceedingly rich men have laid a yoke of almost slavery on the unnumbered masses of non-owning workers. — Pope Leo XIII
Slavery is what slavery's always been: About one person controlling another person using violence and then exploiting them economically, paying them nothing. That's what slavery's about — Kevin Bales
The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. — Thomas Jefferson
Racism is a way to gain economic advantage at the expense of others. Slavery and plantations may be gone, but racism still allows us to regard those who may keep us from financial gain as less than equals. — Alveda King
[...] it is generally accepted that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery. That, at best, is a half-truth. Slavery was an issue, but the primary force for war was a clash between the economic interests of the North and the South. Even the issue of slavery itself was based on economics. — G. Edward Griffin
As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery. — Alexis de Tocqueville
Our opinions agree as to the evil, moral, political, and economical, of slavery. — James Madison
I don't find the idea of sewing degrading. A thing is degrading when you are forced to do it, through economic reasons or through slavery or some other form of compulsion. — Margaret Atwood
Modern Day Slavery Quotes
The main challenge Not For Sale is big and it is modern day slavery, which is a $32billion dollar industry second to the illegal trade of drugs and arms. — David Batstone
When you have somebody that's smart and you're not so smart, to me that's modern day slavery because you're being dictated to. — Bernard Hopkins
I went to Thailand and built a village for 27 rescued children and this is where my passion to help prevent modern day slavery came from. — David Batstone
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings, mainly for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. In short, it's modern day slavery. — Jen Lilley
As I often say, we have come a long way from the days of slavery, but in 2014, discrimination and inequality still saturate our society in modern ways. Though racism may be less blatant now in many cases, its existence is undeniable. — Sayings
Pro Slavery Quotes
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
Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. — Frederick Douglass
The Democratic Party is uniquely virulently racist and pro-slavery to a degree unseen anywhere in the English-speaking world! — Mark Steyn
The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved Bibles over their heads during the Civil War and justified it. — Dan Savage
Look, [Mitt] Romney comes from a religion founded by a criminal who was anti-American, pro-slavery, and a rapist. And he comes from that lineage and says, 'I respect this religion fully.' — Lawrence O'Donnell
Historian Larry Hise notes in his book Pro-Slavery that ministers 'wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in America.' He listed 275 men of the cloth who used the Bible to prove that white people were entitled to own black people as work animals. — James A. Haught
The [Confederate] Flag is - literally - sewed division. People claim it means different things to different people, but it harkens back to the pro-slavery side of the war. — Greg Gutfeld
...secular journalists... tend to accept uncritically the oft - repeated Evangelical Protestant and Conservative Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti - gay. If these people were honest, they would have to admit that the Bible is also pro - slavery and anti - women. — John Shelby Spong
Slave Owners Quotes
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. — Vladimir Lenin
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. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it. — Victor Hugo
It's the old American Double Standard, ya know: Say one thing, do somethin' different. And of course this country is founded on the double standard. That's our history. We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. — George Carlin
But assuming the same premises, to wit, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground; for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other. — William H. Seward
It is a great mistake, as we have already remarked, to be afraid of Him and to act in His presence like a timid and craven slave trembling with fright before his master. — Alphonsus Liguori
When the passage "All men are born free and equal," when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves? — Herman Melville
The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny - the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves. — Henry George
With the Lincoln assassination, the South didnt feel it could mourn along with the North. But Garfield was beloved by all the American people. He was trusted and respected by North and South, by freed slaves and former slave owners. Also by pioneers, which his parents had been, and by immigrants. — Candice Millard
Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners. — Lil Wayne
Slave Ships Quotes
It's time for Black people to stop playing the separating game of geography, of where the slave ship put us down. We must concentrate on where the slave ship picked us up. — John Henrik Clarke
I be off the slave ships, building pyramids, writing my own hieroglyphs — Kendrick Lamar
Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed heathen are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel. — Harriet Beecher Stowe
Sacrifice and neon lights, Slaveships don't wait, Love many, trust few, And don't be late... — Tom Morello
The Islamic community today is faced with a new version of an old struggle. My late mother used to say it doesn't matter whether you came to this country on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, through Ellis Island or the Rio Grande. We're all in the same boat now. — Carol Moseley Braun
And so, whether they came here on the Mayflower, on a slave ship, or on an airplane from Havana, we are all descendants of the men and women who built here the nation that saved the world. — Marco Rubio
America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. — Pat Buchanan
His foreparents came to America in immigrant ships. My foreparents came to America in slave ships. But whatever the original ships, we are both in the same boat tonight. — Jesse Jackson
I won't slave for beggar's pay, likewise gold and jewels, but I would slave to learn the way, to sink your ship of fools. — Robert Hunter
The success of the abolitionist movement lay in its making real for people in Britain and America the slave ship's pervasive and utterly instrumental terror, which was indeed its defining feature. — Marcus Rediker
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
Blood is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and the nation that regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood... there are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them! — Padraic Pearse
It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties. — Patrick Cleburne
Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. — Nelson Mandela
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. — Ulysses S. Grant
Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race. — Michelle Alexander
Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated. — Ibn Khaldun
Is slavery - owner, victim, profit, and domination - exclusive to the human race? Have blacks, Jews, women and children been the only victims of this atrocity? Have not cows been enslaved? What about pigs, chickens, turkeys, fish, sheep? If they’re not enslaved, then what are they? Free? — Gary Yourofsky
You're a slave in your own country, White Man. Each year you get to keep less of the fruits of your labor; each year it gets more difficult to carry the burden the aliens have placed upon you; each year the cheap labor of aliens makes your future less secure; each year you retreat a few steps more into the world of slavery. — George Lincoln Rockwell
Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery! — John Brown
If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears, who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery, we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs. — Mary Mcleod Bethune
Don't worry about a thing, every little thing is gonna be alright — Bob Marley
All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible. — Noah Webster
There is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery, the aftermath of slavery, the development of the Ku Klux Klan. There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice. — Angela Davis
We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. 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
There must be no compromise with slavery - none whatever. Nothing is gained, everything is lost, by subordinating principle to expedience. — William Lloyd Garrison
The war...must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks...unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence,and that, or extermination, we WILL have. — Jefferson Davis
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. — Ta-Nehisi Coates
In Conclusion
Quotes about slavery often emphasize the inherent wrongness of treating individuals as property. They reflect a collective sentiment that every person deserves freedom and should not be subjected to the ownership and control of others. These quotes serve as powerful reminders of the dark chapters in human history and the ongoing struggle for justice and equality.
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of slavery quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about slavery to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of slavery quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.