Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

Slavery was a faith-based institution. It was supported by the churches and their ministers who provided a religious and moral justification of the institution.

… male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

Slavery, racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, subordination, and human rights abuse transform and adapt with the times.

I know how hard it is to be a woman, especially a black woman.

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.

Can you not see that women could do and would do a hundred times more for the slave, if she were not fettered?

Is it right that your mother, your sister... should be classed with criminals and lunatics...? Is it right that while the loafer, the gambler, the drunkard, and even the wife-beater has a vote, earnest, educated and refined women are denied it?... Is it right... that a mother... should be thought unworthy of a vote that is freely given to the blasphemer, the liar, the seducer, and the profligate?

How different has been the course pursued by the Unitarian party. How few of that numerous body, powerful from wealth and education, whether ministers or laymen, have placed themselves by the side of the suffering bondman. The freedom of discussion, which was fearlessly applied to metaphysical doctrines and theological subtleties, was found to be a dangerous weapon when it was used for the examination of an institution, the ramification of which entwined themselves around every altar of mammon worship

For more than six thousand years the history of woman has been one of hopeless sadness. She moved only to the clank of chains, and her vain desire for better and higher things could not find expression, for woman was by force of circumstances inarticulate. Detraction of one sex and exaltation of the other became a habit of mind expressed in law, in religion, in literature as well as in the ordinary activities of everyday life.

Forever behind a woman is the mediaeval English common law which places upon her the stigma of inferiority and bondage

A Sudra [lowest caste untouchable], though emancipated by his master, is not released from servitude; since that is innate in him, who can set him free from it?

The exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours.

Medieval ways of treating women are introduced into a modern society and we’re just supposed to say “Aah, that’s really interesting, how ethnic.” No, it’s wrong and we want to fight it.

The most arbitrary powers in history always hid under the claim of some impersonal logic—God, the laws of nature, the laws of the market—and they always overlooked the backlash when morally intolerable discrepancies became glaringly visible.

By sheer force of a vicious custom even the most ignorant and worthless of men have been enjoying a superiority [over women] which they do not deserve and ought not to have.

Among the progress of the human mind that is most important for human happiness, we must count the entire destruction of the prejudices that have established inequality between the sexes, fatal even to the sex it favors….This inequality has no other source but the abuse of power, and men have tried in vain to excuse it by sophisms.

Popery and Slavery, like two sisters, go hand in hand, sometimes one goes first. Sometimes the other, in a door, but the other is always following close at hand.

The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South ...

If “all men are born free,” how is it that all women are born slaves?

Twin relics of barbarism – polygamy and slavery.

Now let us see if any of you, blind Priests, can speak after this manner, and see if it be not a better Sermon than any of you can make, who are against Women's Speaking.

Shelterless, naked, and hungry, He is exposed to the bleak winds, the cold rains, and hot sun of heaven, with none that love him, none that care for him. His employer hates him because he asks high wages or joins strikes; his fellow laborer hates him because he competes with him for employment…. Let him fare at least as well as the dog, and the horse, and the sheep. Better to be down with the kids and the goats, than stand naked and hungry without. As a slave, he will be beloved and protected. Whilst free, he will be hated, despised, and persecuted. Such is the will of God and order of Providence. It is idle to inquire the reasons.

The oppression of women is based on custom and tradition—not religion.

The darkest page in history is the persecutions of woman.

You—the outside world—will be told that it is our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, and Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman.