Affonso I Quotes

Trafficking Negroes is right, just and lawful. In my opinion there is no more crime in bringing off a cargo of slaves than in bringing off a cargo of jackasses.

I can never acknowledge the right of slavery. I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians — however dignified by the name of the Goddess of Liberty, whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant’s lash, and the cries of his tortured victims

No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.

…these poor men…who are bound, not only for all their lives, but for those of their children.

The Negro's and Negro Women are inhumanly treated, are two-thirds naked, and are very disgusting to the Eye and another Sense, Tho I begin to be more habituated to the Sight, yet I cannot be to the great Cruelty made Use of to the poor ignorant Wretches.

Of all the shameful and infamous expedients whereby man has preyed upon man … this vile thing [the rubber trade] dares to call itself commerce.

It is necessary to put down the horrible abuses. These abuses must end or I will retire from the Congo. I will not allow myself to be spattered with blood or mud; it is necessary that these villainies cease.

They compelled the Portuguese traders to pay for water, wood, and even grass, and every possible pretext was invented for levying fines; and these were patiently submitted to so long as the slave-trade continued to flourish.

A city in which the nobles obtain their desire, is nothing else but a company of masters and slaves ordered to the satisfaction of the avarice and dishonest wishes of the ruling class.

Another doctrine, worse still is gaining ground. It is that the colored people are not sufficiently informed to chose what is best for themselves, and that they ought to be compelled to go to Africa. Many colonizationists now avow it openly. And thus there is danger that the society will grow up into one of the most dreadful systems of cruelty that have ever afflicted the world.

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

Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an height of outrage against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to be practiced by pretended Christians. How shameful are all attempts to color and excuse it!

[The fight against slavery] offers the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression

I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale.

The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances... [Slavery]

There have been, and are this day, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, colored men who are in league with tyrants and who receive a great portion of their daily bread of the moneys which they acquire from the blood and tears of their more miserable brethren, whom they scandalously deliver into the hands of our natural enemies

Deep down I knew that if Hell existed, it was a real place full of ruthless, venal people, like the commodity pits at the Chicago Board of Trade, Disney World, or oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court.

These poor wretches were stolen from their homes, carried to a strange country, and sold to servitude, from which they sought to escape on the first occasion which offered.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.

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

Humans are insane. We kill our own people, starve our own people, sell them, work them to death, beat them, don't give them affordable/free/good healthcare, and let them live in misery, while a few of us have - we have all we want. We are evil.

No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money.

What slavery really demonstrated was that we don't really know how to use energy wisely and that we can be incredibly abusive and barbaric.

There are two things that have always haunted me: the brutality of the European traders and the stories I've heard about Africans selling other Africans into slavery.