Bondage Quotes

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

One hundred years ago the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin…. The negro today asks for justice. We do not answer him—we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil—when we answer “Patience.”

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

Most negroes are still serfs bound to the soil or house servants.

Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

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

It’s often safer to be in chains than to be free.

The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances... [Slavery]

You see, money to you means freedom; to me it means bondage.

Forced from home, and all its pleasures, afric coast I left forlorn; to increase a stranger's treasures, o the raging billows borne. Men from England bought and sold me, paid my price in paltry gold; but, though theirs they have enroll'd me, minds are never to be sold.

We are in bondage to the law so that we may be free.

I'm not averse to being tied up in silk scarves. I like a man to take charge. There's something very sexy about being submissive.

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.

Man is the only slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day, he is always some man's slave for wages, and does that man's work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.

A slave's soul has no worth, my brothers; it lacks strength to tread on this great earth with gallantry and freedom. I pity the poor slaves, they're nought but airy mist, a light breeze scatters them, a fragrance knocks them down; it's only just they crawl on the earth on hands and knees. Today I'll write a hymn to God and pray for this great grace.

I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom.

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

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other fastened about his own neck.

The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty, but to have a slave of his own.

If it be not a sin, an open, flagrant violation of all the rules of justice and humanity, to hold these slaves in bondage, it is indeed folly to put ourselves to any trouble and expense in order to free them.

In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.

I think slavery is the next thing to hell. If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell if he could.

If you go to see the woman, do not forget the whip.