Dar Williams Quotes

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

The slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel.

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

This is about slavery.

My definition of slavery is the deprivation of human volition, any form of relationship between two peoples which is based on the deprivation of volition of one side.

War is horrible, but slavery is worse.

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

Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.

Slavery always has, and always will produce insurrections wherever it exists, because it is a violation of the natural order of things.

Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

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.

Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.

Slavery is ...an atrocious debasement of human nature.

We were his disposable things. Brought to him like cattle. Stripped of what made us sisters or daughters or children. There was nothing that he could take from us—our genes, our bones, our wombs—that would ever satisfy him. There was no other way that we would be free.

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

Child slavery is a crime against humanity. Humanity itself is at stake here. A lot of work still remains, but I will see the end of child labor in my lifetime.

If you look at slavery across all human history, and you sort of strip away the packaging, whether it's racialized or religious-based, and you look at the actual core of the slavery, it's one person completely controlling another one.

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.

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.

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

Liberty in America means the power to flog slaves, and to work them for nothing.

A slave has never maintained an action against the violator of his bed. A slave is not admonished for incontinence, or punished for fornication or adultery; never prosecuted for bigamy …

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