| Massive poverty
and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times -- times in which
the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth
accumulation -- that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social
evils.
-- Nelson Mandela |
|
By a divine
paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two. So in the wonderful
reciprocities of being, we can never reach the higher levels until all our fellows
ascend with us.
-- Edwin Markham
 |
*
“Emancipate yourselves
from mental slavery.
None but ourselves
can free our minds.
Won't you help to sing
The songs of freedom?”
-- Bob
Marley |
 | The
augmentation of slaves weakens the states; and such a trade is diabolical in itself,
and disgraceful to mankind.
-- George Mason |
Slavery
as an institution that degraded man to a thing has never died out. In some periods
of history it has flourished: many civilizations have climbed to power and glory
on the backs of slaves. In other times slaves have dwindled in number and economic
importance. But never has slavery disappeared.
-- Milton Meltzer
 |
"The saddest sight these
days is the image of hundreds of thousands of children kidnapped and lured into
being child soldiers from the age of eight. "
-- Sir
Roger Moore |
Compelled
to become instruments of war, to kill and be killed, child soldiers are forced
to give violent expression to the hatreds of adults
-- Olara
Otunnu | 
|
Look
back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions
in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.
-- Anna Quindlen
| "The
artist must elect to fight for Freedom or for Slavery.
-- Paul Robeson |  |
 |
The slave
is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything
he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.
-- Bertrand
Russell |
Once
slavery in America was not seen as radical. It became, instead, a revolutionary
idea that slaves should be freed. When we have lived under a pernicious power
long enough, no matter how oppressive, we grow so accustomed to the yoke that
its removal seems frightening, even wrong.
-- Gerry L. Spence
When
we acknowledge the kingdom of the self, we will no longer accept slavery either
for ourselves or for others, no matter how it is disguised.
-- Gerry L. Spence
Whoever visits some
estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses,
and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled
poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the
scene there broods a portentous shadow — the shadow of law. So long as the law
considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only
as so many things belonging to a master — so long as the failure, or misfortune,
or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange
a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil —
so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated
administration of slavery.
-- Harriet
Beecher Stowe | 
|
When
I have been travelling up and down on our boats, or about on my collecting tours,
and reflected that every brutal, disgusting, mean, low-lived fellow I met, was
allowed by our laws to become absolute despot of as many men, women and children,
as he could cheat, steal, or gamble money enough to buy,--when I have seen such
men in actual ownership of helpless children, of young girls and women,--I have
been ready to curse my country, to curse the human race!
-- Harriet
Beecher Stowe
“For
in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition
of slavery.”
-- Jonathan Swift
Freedom
Day
- February 1
End
Slavery Day
- December 2
