Quotes · Skopia

35 quotes

If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality—its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extention—its enlargement.

Abraham Lincoln

1860

★ 1.2

Essay · Newspaper

Let Southern oppressors tremble-let their secret abettors tremble-let their Northern apologists tremble-let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.

William Lloyd Garrison

To the Public · 1831

★ 1.9

Speech

The slave trade is contrary to the laws of God and to the rights of men.

David Hartley (the Younger)

1776

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

The last, perhaps the greatest, of the prominent sources of discord and disaster supposed to lurk in our political condition was the institution of domestic slavery.

Martin Van Buren

Inaugural Address of Martin van Buren · 1837

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

I believe that involuntary servitude, as it exists in different States of this Confederacy, is recognized by the Constitution. I believe that it stands like any other admitted right, and that the States where it exists are entitled to efficient remedies to enforce the constitutional provisions.

Franklin Pierce

Inaugural Address of Franklin Pierce · 1853

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

All agree that under the Constitution slavery in the States is beyond the reach of any human power except that of the respective States themselves wherein it exists.

James Buchanan

Inaugural Address of James Buchanan · 1857

★ 1.9

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.

John Brown

1859

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom.

Abraham Lincoln

1854

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

This government was instituted to secure the blessings of freedom, and…slavery is an unqualified evil to the negro, to the white man, to the soil, and to the State.

Abraham Lincoln

1858

★ 2.0

Film · Epic (film) · Historical drama (film) · Epic · Historical drama

Death is the only freedom a slave knows. That's why he's not afraid of it.

Spartacus

Spartacus · 1960

★ 2.1

To be a slave was to be a human being under conditions in which that humanity was denied. They were not slaves. They were people. Their condition was slavery.

Julius Lester

To Be a Slave · 1968

★ 2.6

Legal opinion · Legal writing

The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law.

William Murray, Lord Mansfield

Somerset v. Stewart · 1771

★ 3.5

Speech · Political speech

Where Slavery is, there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is, there Slavery cannot be.

Charles Sumner

1864

★ 3.5

Political literature

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.

Lydia Maria Child

An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans · 1833

★ 3.6

Slave narrative · Autobiography and memoir

I entered the world a slave-in the midst of a country whose most honoured writings declare that all men have a right to liberty.

Henry Box Brown

1849

★ 3.6

Film · Epic (film) · Drama (film) · Epic · Drama

The evil that men should turn their brothers into beasts of burden, to slave and suffer in dumb anguish, to be stripped of spirit, and hope, and faith—only because they are of another race, another creed. If there is a god, he did not mean this to be so.

Moses

The Ten Commandments · 1956

★ 3.6

Speech · Political speech

I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.

Abraham Lincoln

1854

★ 3.7

Personal journal

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Abraham Lincoln

1858

★ 3.7

Speech · Political speech

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth.

Abraham Lincoln

1862

★ 3.7

Film · Epic (film) · Historical drama (film) · Epic · Historical drama

All men lose when they die and all men die. But a slave and a free man lose different things.

Spartacus

Spartacus · 1960

★ 3.7

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