Ralph Waldo Emerson 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.

Slavery is the rule. Freedom the exception.

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.

A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains.

A slave-holder cannot hold a slave without putting himself or his deputy in the cage for holding the slave.

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

Man is everywhere still in chains.

The very idea that human beings are held in bondage is sickening.

We cannot enslave others without enslaving a part of ourselves.

War is horrible, but slavery is worse.

However you disguise slavery, it is slavery still. Its chains, though wreathed with roses, not only fasten on the body but rivet on the mind.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery," said I, "still thou art a bitter draught.

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

Slavery is the offspring of darkness.

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

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

People can be slave-ships in shoes.

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.

Slavery and freedom cannot exist together.

Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves.

Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.

The States in which we dwell have twice availed themselves of our voluntary services, and have repaid us with chains and slavery. Shall we a third time kiss the foot that crushes us? If so, we deserve our chains.

This is about slavery.

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.