May Sarton Quotes

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.

In most ages many countries have had part of their inhabitants in a state of slavery; yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition of man. It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal; and very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to another but by violent compulsion. An individual may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.

By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two

Why is Slavery so much condemn'd and strove against in one Case, and so highly applauded and held so necessary and so sacred in another?

Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery.

When one person is enslaved, we're all enslaved.

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

Slavery and freedom cannot exist together.

The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty, but to have a slave of his own.

Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.

Is Justice to be established by subjecting half of mankind to the will of the other half? Justice, Sir, is blind to colors, and weighs in equal scales the rights of all men whether white or black…. An opportunity is now presented, if not to diminish, at least to prevent the growth of a sin that sits heavy on the soul of every one of us.

Slavery is the rule. Freedom the exception.

No country can be called free where there is one slave.

I am a firm believer in slavery.

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.

Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.

Slavery can never be abolished.

If given a choice, I would have certainly selected to be what I am: one of the oppressed instead of one of the oppressors.

Neither can men, by the same principles, be considered as lands, goods, or houses, among possessions. It is necessary that all property should be inferiour to its possessor. But how does the slave differ from his master, but by chance?

Only very slowly and late have men come to realize that unless freedom is universal it is only extended privilege.

It the British System is the most gigantic system of slavery the world has yet seen, and therefore it is that freedom gradually disappears from every country over which England is enabled to obtain control.

The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.

Some people are by nature slaves and will always be so.