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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 habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.
-W. H. Auden
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The sovereign being is burdened with a servitude that crushes him, and the condition of free men is deliberate servility.
-Georges Bataille
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The blacks of this region are a cheerful, careless, dirty, race, not hard worked, and in many respects indulgently treated. It is of course the desire of the master that his slaves shall be laborious; on the other hand it is the determination of the slave to lead as easy a life as he can. The master has the power of punishment on his side; the slave, on his, has invincible inclination, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice... Good natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is purchased by good treatment on the other.
description of slavery in the South; unsympathetic toward Blacks
-William Cullen Bryant, 1843
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Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.
-Pearl Buck
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Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
-Edmund Burke
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Captivity is the greatest of all evils that can befall one.
-Miguel de Cervantes
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Slavery can only be abolished by raising the character of the people who compose the nation; and that can be done only by showing them a higher one.
-Maria Weston Chapman
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Thy treasures of gold
Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold;
Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear
The crack of the whip, and the footsteps of fear.
-Lydia Maria Child
From the anti-slavery song The Yankee Girl quoted in her book Slavery's Pleasant Homes, 1843
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It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.
-James Fenimore Cooper
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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.
-William Cowper
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I pity them greatly, but I must be mum, for how could we do without sugar and rum?
-William Cowper
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Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves; all men are born free, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other.
-Marquis De Sade
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The art of being a slave is to rule one's master.
-Diogenes
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The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.
-Andrea Dworkin
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If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.
-Wayne Dyer
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Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire.
-Anwar El-Sadat
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There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.
-George Eliot
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Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.
-Nikki Giovanni
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If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation.
-Vaclav Havel
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Slavery is the first step towards civilization. In order to develop it is necessary that things should be much better for some and much worse for others, then those who are better off can develop at the expense of others.
-Alexander Herzen
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To relive the relationship between owner and slave we can consider how we treat our cars and dogs -- a dog exercising a somewhat similar leverage on our mercies and an automobile being comparable in value to a slave in those days.
-Edward Hoagland
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You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.
-Billie Holiday
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The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
-Thomas Jefferson
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Books about Slavery
