Human Bondage Quotes

The negro achieves his greatest perfection, physical and moral, and also greatest longevity, in a state of slavery

The conspiracy is nearly completed. The Legislation of the Republic is in the hands of this handful of Slaveholders. The United States Senate assures it to them. The Executive power of the Government is theirs. Buchanan took the oath of fealty to them on the steps of the Capitol last Wednesday. The body which gives the supreme law of the land, has just acceded to their demands, and dared to declare that under the charter of the Nation, men of African descent are not citizens of the United States and can not be -- that the Ordinance of 1787 was void -- that human Slavery is not a local thing, but pursues its victims to free soil, clings to them wherever they go, and returns with them -- that the American Congress has no power to prevent the enslavement of men in the National Territories -- that the inhabitants themselves of the Territories have no power to exclude human bondage from their midst -- and that men of color can not be suitors for justice in the Courts of the United States!

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

Proclaiming slaves free does not make them free.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

In 2009, at the Vancouver Peace Summit, I met a supporter of Free the Slaves, an NGO dedicated to eradicating modern-day slavery; weeks later, I flew down to Los Angeles and met with the director of Free the Slaves; thus began my journey into exploring modern-day slavery.

I consecrate my life to the abolition of slavery.

The slave trade must be suppressed.

Oddly, I'd been to most of the locations where I started photographing slavery many times before. I even considered some of them homes-away-from-home. But there can be dark corners in familiar places.

It has always been a great wrong that these men and their families should be held in bondage. We of the North have hitherto acquiesced in it, lest, in the endeavor to redress it in violation of the Constitution, greater evils might ensue.

Freedom’s Keystone is Slavery.

No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.

One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.

The market value of slaves in 1860 exceeded that of the entire nation’s railroads and factories put together … it was, relative to the gross national product in today’s economic values in excess of $9.6 Trillion.

There are only two races (and they are not distinguished by color): those who are free and those who are not.

I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate.

If you keep on buying things made by child slaves in such conditions, you are equally responsible for the perpetration of slavery.

The instrument of expansion of Classical civilization was a social organization, slavery.

I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom, I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in the old cabin quarter, with the old folks, and my brothers and sisters. But to this solemn resolution I came; I was free, and they should be free also; I would make a home for them in the North, and the Lord helping me, I would bring them all there.

It is a debasement of our common humanity that must be called by its true name, modern slavery …. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving—that’s slavery.

The resources, advantages, and powers of the American people are very great, and they have, consequently, succeeded to equally great responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them to test whether a government, established on the principles of human freedom, can be maintained against an effort to build one upon the exclusive foundation of human bondage.

Slave keeping is a custom that casts the most indelible odium on a whole people, causing some...to infer that they are a different race formed by the Creator for brutal service, to drudge for us with their brethren of the stalls.

Georgia would become an oppressive regime, promoting the misery of thousands in Africa by permitting a free people to be sold into perpetual Slavery.

No country can be called free where there is one slave.

If slaves will make good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong.