"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."

Dworkin, Andrea on slavery   

"So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to the 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."

Stowe, Harriet Beecher on slavery   

"Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them."

Rousseau, Jean Jacques on slavery
8 fans of this quote   

"Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's nature -- opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow."

Lincoln, Abraham on slavery   

"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."

Jefferson, Thomas on slavery   

"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."

Herzen, Alexander on slavery   

"The art of being a slave is to rule one's master."

Diogenes of Sinope on slavery   

"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."

Chapman, Maria Weston on slavery   

"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."

Auden, W. H. on slavery   

"The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends."

Wilde, Oscar on slavery   

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."

Plato on dictators and dictatorship
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"Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie."

Stone, I. F. on freedom