Mother Jones Quotes

When people think of slavery, they think of an era from the distant past. Grainy photographs from Civil War times. And yet it goes on.

If you keep on buying things made by child slaves in such conditions, you are equally responsible for the perpetration of slavery.

It is troubling that modern slavery is a crime that can be hidden in the supply chains of the goods and services we use every day. The uncomfortable reality is that the money we spend could be driving demand for slavery across the globe.

In India, innocent and poor children are victims of child labor.

Child slavery is a crime against humanity. Humanity itself is at stake here. A lot of work still remains, but I will see the end of child labor in my lifetime.

Slavery is illegal everywhere, but it exists all over the world.

We believe slavery was abolished with Abraham Lincoln; unfortunately, human slavery is alive and well.

Modern day slavery is the great tragedy of our time and the U.S. cannot turn a blind eye to it on our soil or another nation's.

I believe that modern slavery is the most outrageous assault on the rights of an individual. It is something that touches me deeply because I grew up in rural Brazil and could see first-hand how poverty forced people to work in harsh, exploitative conditions.

Selling the commodity of humans has to be the biggest business out there, as it is the most lucrative. I cannot go to sleep at night, unless I know that I am using all of my platforms to fight human trafficking.

The buying and selling of women, girls and boys is a frightening modern day form of slavery that must be stopped.

Slavery exists. It is black in the South, and white in the North.

Some girls cannot go to school because of the child labor and child trafficking.

Around the world, human traffickers trick many people into slavery by false promises of good jobs or good education, only to find themselves forced to work without pay, under the threat of violence.

The Soul of man is made an article of merchandize by his fellow man and can such a land be happy? No! Happyness does not dwell in any land that is scard by the blighting curse of Slavery.

You cannot afford a world with slavery, which literally takes someone and turns them into a machine.

Wherever we've gone around the world, we've found quite significant gaps: the holy texts, no matter which one you turn to, has ambiguity in it around slavery. That, we knew, was being used as justification by slavers all over the world.

If we can't begin to agree on fundamentals, such as the elimination of the most abusive forms of child labor, then we really are not ready to march forward into the future.

In the 19th century, the chains [of slavery] were metal. Today, the chains are debt—the worker has to repay his transportation, his tools, his food.

If there is any matter upon which civilized countries have agreed ... it is the evil of premature and excessive child labor.

The exploitation of children is both easy and profitable.

The slave trade must be suppressed.

Slavery is the first form of Globalization in which America participated.

In Uzbekistan, up to two million children under 15 are put to work harvesting cotton each year — just as the mills of St. Petersburg, Manchester and Alsace once heavily depended on child labor from poorhouses and orphanages.

In our fields, on our fishing vessels, in our factories and our homes, there are people deprived of their freedom and trapped in a life of unimaginable suffering.