Henry Highland Garnet Quotes

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.

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

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.

Emancipation - what is meant by it? Simply that the slaves shall cease to be held as property and shall henceforth be held and treated as human beings. Simply, that we should take our feet from off their necks.

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

We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.

Slavery is the rule. Freedom the exception.

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

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

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

Slavery is the offspring of darkness.

That slow poison [slavery] is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people. Every gentlemen here is born a petty tyrant, practiced in acts of despotism and cruelty.

Do we always make our freedom out of someone else's bondage?

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

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

Slavery and freedom cannot exist together.

I'm tired of being considered property.

Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves.

This is about slavery.

God never made a tyrant, or a slave.

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.

The sacred right of self government … has been so perverted so that if one man decides to enslave a second man, a third man may not object.

To think that man, thou just and loving God! Should stand before thee with a tyrant's rod, O'er creatures like himself, with souls from Thee, Yet dare to boast of perfect liberty! Away! away! I'd rather hold my neck By doubtful tenure from a Sultan's beck, In climes where liberty has scarce been nam'd, Nor any right but that of ruling claim'd, Than thus to live where boasted Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves!

This is not a question of expediency, but of right. In antebellum days the proposition was not, “Are the blacks good enough to be free?” but, “Have they the right?” So today the question is not, “Will outrages result from freeing humanity?” but, “Has it the right to life, the means of life, the opportunities of happiness?”

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