Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Servitude degrades people to such a point that they come to like it.

A slave's soul has no worth, my brothers; it lacks strength to tread on this great earth with gallantry and freedom. I pity the poor slaves, they're nought but airy mist, a light breeze scatters them, a fragrance knocks them down; it's only just they crawl on the earth on hands and knees. Today I'll write a hymn to God and pray for this great grace.

It's sort of what the Johnny and Devi stories are about, the idea of always being a slave to something.

Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

People can be slave-ships in shoes.

The world today is divided into the free and the enslaved.

Slavery was not a bad day on the job. It was not your boss yelling at you. It was not hard work for little pay. This was a full system of human subjugation.

The sovereign being is burdened with a servitude that crushes him, and the condition of free men is deliberate servility.

There are people in this servile world who will endure any trampling, and at the first beck rush delightedly to proffer their assistance.

Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.

Many of the former Slaves are only nominally free, for the servile spirit is still within them.

Slavery is the rule. Freedom the exception.

Make us your slaves, but feed us.

When the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him.

In every man's mind the good seeds of liberty are planted, and he who brings his fellow down so low, as to make him contented with a condition of slavery, commits the highest crime against God and man. Brethren, your oppressors aim to do this. They endeavor to make you as much like brutes as possible. When they have blinded the eyes of your mind-when they have embittered the sweet waters of the light which shines from the word of God-then, and not till then has American slavery done its perfect work.

The slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel.

It's as if all identity has been stolen from them, except their identity as slaves.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.

Beat and cuff your slave, keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog. Feed and clothe him well, work him moderately, surround him with physical comfort and dreams of freedom intrude.

We stole their babes and mothers, chiefs and braves Although we held the whip, you knew we were The real slaves To alchemy, human alchemy.

There are three ways in which a man becomes a slave. He may be born into slavery, or forced into it, or he can deliberately accept his servitude. All three forms flourish in the modern world. Men are born and forced into slavery in Russia and her satellites states. Men in the free world invite slavery when they ask the government to provide complete security, when they surrender their freedom to the "Welfare State."

Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!

To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.