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Slavery

system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work

Slavery is a form of forced labor in which human beings are forcibly held under the involuntary control of others, and required to work under legal penalty.

Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy.
—Frederick Douglass

Quotes

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A

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  • One Cartwright brought a Slave from Russia, and would scourge him, for which he was questioned: and it was resolved, That England was too pure an Air for Slaves to breathe in.
  • If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?
    • Mary Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage, 3rd ed. (1706), preface
  • Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.
    • Edmund Burke, Speech "On Conciliation with America" (22 March 1775)

C

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  • Nimia libertas et populis et privatis in nimiam servitutem cadit.
    • Excessive liberty leads both nations and individuals into excessive slavery.
    • Cicero, De Republica, I. 44; reported in J. K. Hoyt and Anna L. Ward (eds.) The Cyclopaedia of Practical Quotations, 4th ed. (1882), p. 564
  • Fit in dominatu servitus, in servitute dominatus.
    • He is sometimes slave who should be master; and sometimes master who should be slave.
    • Cicero, Oratio Pro Rege Deiotaro, XI; reported in Hoyt and Ward (1882), p. 555


  • The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.
  • Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
    That slaves, howe’er contented, never know.

D

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  • Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy.
  • Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.

E

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  • Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science, without slavery, no Roman Empire. But without the basis laid by Hellenism and the Roman Empire, also no modern Europe. We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development presupposes a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognised. In this sense we are entitled to say: Without the slavery of antiquity no modern socialism.

G

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  • That state is a state of Slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him.
    • Eric Gill, "Slavery and Freedom", Art-nonsense and Other Essays (1929)

H

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  • Jove fix'd it certain, that whatever day
    Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
    • Homer, Odyssey, bk. 17, l. 392. Pope's translation (1725)

K

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  • it is NOT in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small-group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent.

L

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  • They are slaves who fear to speak
    For the fallen and the weak;
    They are slaves who will not choose
    Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
    Rather than in silence shrink
    From the truth they needs must think;
    They are slaves who dare not be
    In the right with two or three.

M

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  • Where bastard Freedom waves
    Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.
    • Thomas Moore, "To the Lord Viscount Forbes, from the City of Washington", in Works, vol. 2 (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1823), p. 155

N

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O

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S

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  • I thought ye would never have given out these arms till you had recovered your ancient freedom; but you are all recreants and dastards, and delight to live in slavery to the nobility.
  • Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.
  • Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! said I,—still thou art a bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.
    • Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768), "The Passport. The Hotel at Paris"
  • Torture was necessary to maintain slavery. It was integral to slavery. You cannot have slavery without some torture or the threat of torture; and you cannot have torture without slavery. You cannot imprison a free man for ever unless you have broken him; and you can only forcibly break a man's soul by torturing it out of him. Slavery dehumanizes; torture dehumanizes in exactly the same way. The torture of human beings who have no freedom and no recourse to the courts is slavery.
  • By the law of Slavery, man, created in the image of God, is divested of the human character, and declared to be a mere chattel.
    • Charles Sumner, "The Anti-Slavery Enterprise", address at New York (9 May 1859), in C. Edwards Lester (ed.) Life and Public Services of Charles Sumner (1874), p. xxvii [1]
  • Where Slavery is there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is there Slavery cannot be.
    • Charles Sumner, "Slavery and the Rebellion", speech before the New York Young Men's Republican Union (5 November 1864), published as Slavery and the Rebellion: One and Inseparable (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1864), p. 10

T

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V

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  • Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature.
    • Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (1764); translated as A Philosophical Dictionary, vol. 2 (Boston: J. P. Mendum, 1852), p. 307

Y

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  • “He is a slave.” His soul, however, may be that of a freeman. “He is a slave.” But shall that stand in his way? Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear.
    • Seneca the Young, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium

W

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  • A Christian! going, gone!
    Who bids for God's own image?—for his grace,
    Which that poor victim of the market-place
    Hath in her suffering won?

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), pp. 715-16
  • Servi peregrini, ut primum Galliæ fines penetraverint eodem momento liberi sunt.
    • Foreign slaves, as soon as they come within the limits of Gaul, that moment they are free.
    • Bodinus, Book I, Chapter V
  • The very mudsills of society. * * * We call them slaves. * * * But I will not characterize that class at the North with that term; but you have it. It is there, it is everywhere, it is eternal.
  • And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
    While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
  • They [the blacks] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.
    • Roger B. Taney, The Dred Scot Case. See Howard's Rep, Volume XIX, p. 407
  • That execrable sum of all villanies commonly called the Slave-trade.

See also

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