David Edwards Quotes

I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.

I grew up like a neglected weed - ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.

I don't want to be limited or ghettoized in any way.

What good to me is the festive garment of freedom when I am in a slave's smock at home?

We don't really like rules. We think, in some way, they are an infringement of liberty.

Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.

We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without.

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen; for kings And subjects, mutual foes, forever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

… cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement.

The path of freedom is blocked much more by those who wish to obey than by those who wish to command.

Without rebellion, mankind would stagnate, and injustice would be irremediable.

It is pretty safe to assume that any given censor is a fool. The very fact that he is a censor indicates that.

A subject’s faults a subject may proclaim A monarch’s errors are forbidden game.

No nation can be freer than its most oppressed, richer than its poorest, wiser than its most ignorant.

We question why liberty should be sent from France which has too little to America which has too much.

The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.

It cannot be too clearly understood that this is not a free country, and it will be an evil day for the legal profession when it is.

Slavery is the rule. Freedom the exception.

You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery. I was born in a country where slavery had been established by British kings and parliaments, as well as by the laws of that country ages before my existence. I found the Christian religion and slavery growing under the same authority and cultivation. I nevertheless disliked it. In former days there was no combating the prejudices of men supported by interest; the day I hope is approaching when, from principles of gratitude as well as justice, every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the golden rule.

Liberty and equality are captivating sounds, but they often captivate to destroy.

Those who think of freedom in this country as one long, broad path leading ever onward and upward are dead damned wrong.

In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.

Seeking to ban things is as bossy as you can get.