Free men have arms; slaves do not.
In our natural state, we are glorious beings. In the world of illusion, we are lost and imprisoned, slaves to our appetites and our will to false power.
In Japan, the people preserve their temples for their exquisite beauty, and there are a great many sincere Buddhists; but China is irreligious: a nation of atheists or agnostics, or slaves of impious superstitions. In an extended tramp among temples, I have not seen a single male worshiper or a thing to please the eye.
I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.
Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the group and say, 'It is wrong for Black people to be anti-Semitic,' or 'It is wrong for America to discriminate against persons of African descent and made them slaves and based its wealth upon free labor,' it's crucial to say that.
But assuming the same premises, to wit, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground; for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other.
John Brown was tried for treason, murder, and inciting slaves to insurrection.
I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.
They are imported by companies, controlled as serfs, worked like slaves, and at last go back to China with all their earnings. They are in every place, they seem to have no sex. Boys work, girls work; it is all alike to them.
The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler.
Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
Napoleon had been fighting this army of slaves and free people in Haiti and it depleted his forces. And after the Revolution, when the French were driven out, they stopped and sold this big chunk of North America to the Americans for very little money.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equal, he owned slaves. Women couldn't vote. But, throughout history, our abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights leaders called on our nation, in reality, to live up to the nation's professed ideals in that Declaration.
Sometime in the not too distant future, denying gays the right to marry will be viewed as historically corrupt - as corrupt as denying slaves their freedom.
Experience teaches that when the will and imagination are in conflict, the imagination usually wins. What we imagine may defeat our reason and make us slaves to what we taste, see, hear, smell, and feel in the mind's eye. The body is indeed the servant of the mind.
I suppose I have had more advantages and privileges than most of you, who are slaves have ever known, and I believe more than many white people have enjoyed, for which I desire to bless God, and pray that he may bless those who have given them to me.
Everything we are is anchored in our childhoods. The drama comes in how we deal with it. Are we slaves to our past, or can we rise above it? This is the stuff of great stories.
Some people are by nature slaves and will always be so.
Father had notions about manhood suffrage, public schools, the education and the elevation of the masses, and the gradual emancipation of the slaves, that did not suit the uncompromising views of people in places like Richmond.
The stones in your driveway may have come from the slaves who spend all day breaking rocks because it's cheaper for the company to get them from India, where the labor is free. We are all connected. And we all have human value. That's what my work is about.
The slaves had food stamps, too. It was called 'scraps from Massa's table.'
The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them.
Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating 'Lincoln the myth.' He overcame a lot of his own prejudices and became what many would consider the first black man's president.
That a majority of women do not wish for any important change in their social and civil condition, merely proves that they are the unreflecting slaves of custom.
Would any one believe that I am master of slaves by my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them.
If you keep on buying things made by child slaves in such conditions, you are equally responsible for the perpetration of slavery.
Harriet Washington, in 'Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present,' documents the smallpox experiments Thomas Jefferson performed on his Monticello slaves. In fact, much of what we now think of as public health emerged from the slave system.
My father was a man of great charity towards the poor, and compassion for the sick, and also for servants; so much so, that he never could be persuaded to keep slaves, for he pitied them so much: and a slave belonging to one of his brothers being once in his house, was treated by him with as much tenderness as his own children.
We've become slaves to words like 'local,' 'fresh,' and 'seasonal.' We all want to be Thomas Jefferson's agrarian hero, but sustainable food is a difficult beast.
I have always believed, heretofore, in the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are born free and equal; but of late it appears that some men are born slaves, and I regret that they are not black, so all the world might know them.
Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space.
I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
We incarcerate more African-American men today than were slaves in 1850.
I have seen too many screenwriters of promise become formula addicts and slaves to stop watch structure. Spend that time watching movies, reading screenplays, reading plays, and most importantly - write from your gut.
