Nadezhda Tolokonnikova Quotes

[Describing slavery:] ... a cruel war against human nature itself.

I think slavery is the next thing to hell. If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell if he could.

This is what it means to be a slave; to be abused and bear it; compelled by violence to suffer wrong.

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows.

Slavery is the cause of treason and sustains it everywhere it exists.

Slavery is the next thing to hell.

Slavery is the offspring of darkness.

Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!

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.

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.

I said I thought female labour of the sort exacted from these slaves, and corporal chastisement such as they endure, must be abhorrent to any manly or humane man.

No blessing, no good, can follow in the path trodden by slavery.

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

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

Slavery is something that is all too often swept under the carpet.

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.

I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

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.

Whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed.

The rights of human nature are deeply wounded by this infamous practice.

Every slave is a stolen man.

… these English masters who, after placing me in a position which forced me to get down on my knees and elbows to eat, are now depriving me of food and light and giving me chains and a Bible. I am not complaining of the penalties which my masters inflict on me -- it is my job to suffer -- but I insist that I have the right to inform the world of the treatment to which I am subjected

In the name of the young girl sold from the warm clasp of a mother's arms to the clutches of a libertine or profligate,—in the name of the slave mother, her heart rocked to and fro by the agony of her mournful separations,—I thank you, that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race

Torture was necessary to maintain slavery. It was integral to slavery. You cannot have slavery without some torture or the threat of torture; and you cannot have torture without slavery. You cannot imprison a free man forever unless you have broken him; and you can only forcibly break a man's soul by torturing it out of him. Slavery dehumanizes; torture dehumanizes in exactly the same way. The torture of human beings who have no freedom and no recourse to the courts is slavery.