John Brown Quotes

Abolitionists believe that, as all men are born free, so all who are now held as slaves in this country were born free, and that they are slaves now is the sin, not of those who introduced the race into this country, but of those, and those alone, who now hold them and have held them in slavery from their birth.

I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom

Now I've been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.

It has always been a great wrong that these men and their families should be held in bondage.

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.

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

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

Slavery and freedom cannot exist together.

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 consecrate my life to the abolition of slavery.

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom on those who are not free.

Connivance is the relaxation of slavery, not the definition of liberty.

This is about slavery.

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

On this subject [slavery] I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.

Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible.

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Inhale our air, that moment they are free! They touch our country, and their shackles fall!

Many of the former Slaves are only nominally free, for the servile spirit is still within them.

Every slave is a stolen man.

Peace was restored between America and Great Britain which diffused universal joy among all parties except us, who had escaped slavery and taken refuge in the English army; for a report prevailed at New York that all the slaves … were to be delivered up to their masters although some of them had been 3 or 4 years amongst the British. This dreadful rumor filled us with inexpressible anguish and terror, especially when we saw our old masters … seizing upon slaves in the streets of New York, or even dragging them out of their beds.

Slavery is right, just, and lawful and consequently practiced every day.

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

[The fight against slavery] offers the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression

This is the harpoon that will kill the monster of slavery.

I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist.