I have observed this in my experience of slavery, – that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking...

Most of us spend all our working life dreaming of doing nothing, then when we end up doing nothing, we long for something. When we have neither longing, I think that is what they call...

The problem with working, I mean not self-employed, is that you have to get up and routinely do something that you do not want to do, plus you get talked down to, ordered around by...

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

John’s master, in allowing his slaves to marry, was much more liberal than most slave owners, who allowed their slaves no such liberty. As a rule negro men were not allowed to marry at all,...

Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. The unhappy man who has been treated as...

backward,” stagnating, and unproductive. We now know that investment in slaves brought a considerable profit and that the Southern economy grew rapidly throughout the pre–Civil War decades. It is true, however, that the system depended...

Human trafficking is nothing less than a modern form of slavery,

You owe it to yourself, to refuse to surrender to obstacles that are meant to stop you from reaching far in your endeavours. Be determined that you will never be a captive of your environment.

I’ll let you see the door is open, so you know I’m open to the idea that you can leave anytime you want. So long as you are able to pick the lock on your...

Yes here’s to the founding fathers—slave-owners, British citizens who didn’t want to pay taxes…

The old face, crinkled and dented with canals running every which way, pushed and shoved up against itself for a while, till a big old smile busted out from beneath ’em all, and his grey...

Summer turns and marches away, fed up with being handled like a child. Like she’s a glass doll that might break at any minute. She hasn’t been a child since the day she was whipped...

Some people think they can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure. However, when they have all these things, they are not satisfied. They realize happiness is not simply having...

Out of slavery, freedom –yes, & roses from the pig’s behind.

Keep me rather in this cage, and feed me sparingly, if you dare. Anything that brings me closer to illness and the edge of death makes me more faithful. It is only when you make...

That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it...

Career is just posh slavery.

I WILL FOLLOW ANYONE…AND BEG EVERYONE…TO BE A HERO… AND SAVE THE YAZIDI NATION

If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were...

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people...

Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master’s commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of...

Captivity ends when creativity begins

You cannot live a nonviolent life as long as you are consuming violence. Please consider going vegan.

Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed injustice has in it the elements of this last convulsion.

Honey, it isn’t democracy that runs this country. Capitalism rules. It does no good to reason with the capitalists or their politicians. This is a class war. We have to stir up the American people,...

Any constituency that needs amending, is a prototype in error.

But there’s no such thing as free. There are only different and more horrible ways to be enslaved.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me,...

jungle” as our warriors meet and join the battle drum that calls for unity in the struggle for breaking the chains of modern slavery—like the butterflies flying the skies and the birds over the seas,...

Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.

Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence! — fortunate for the millions of his manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their awful thralldom! — fortunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of universal liberty! — fortunate...

When I want to find the vanguard of the people I look to the uneasy dreams of an aristocracy and find what they dread most.

He had been bored, that’s all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen – and that explains most human...

I am grateful, and would thank the Gods(if there were any to thank) that I have finally mastered this art of forgetting–of murdering the memory.

That is what the Slave Trade was all about. Not death from poxes and musketry and whippings and malnutrition and melancholy and suicide: death itself. For before the white men came to Guinea to strip-mine...

Because I care about human beings, I want them to be free to do what is right for them. Isn’t that more important than mere peace on earth? Isn’t freedom, even dangerous freedom, preferable to...

These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent in that school,...

That was when I realized we weren’t born to beslaves. It was ignorant for any man to think he could be the master of another. We were all meant to be free, and somewhere there...

What is it like to be so free – so trapped, but so free? What kind of bird sings only when caught? What kind of slave outshines and rises above her master?

For guns and ammunition,” says I.

Although slavery has long been a part of human history, American chattel slavery represents a case of human trauma incomparable in scope, duration and consequence to any other incidence of human enslavement.

But no sooner had morning broken than he took hold of his whip and ceremoniously stepped out to address his slaves. Each blow was liberating, it was like unshaking proof of the great lie of...

A realist is a slave to reality.

You’ll see some bad things, but if you didn’t see them, they’d still be happening.

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight,...

When I speak of God, I mean that god who prevented man from putting forth his hand and taking also of the fruit of the tree of life that he might live forever; of that...

You have a chance to save lives! If you don’t take it, you may regret it!

The day he was to sell the children from their mother he would tell that mother to go to some other place to do some work and in their absence he would sell the children....

Vampire Willow Rosenberg: “In my world, we have people in chains, and we can ride them like ponies.