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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #slavery
In the nineteenth century, slavery was the greatest wrong, and government never stood so tall as when it was redressing that wrong. ↗
#government #greatest #never #nineteenth #nineteenth century
But when they brought Sabira out, the crowd parted almost magically. A sea of hands rose faster than a swell and a bidding war commenced, amongst these civilized gentlemen who made their living off the backs of slaves. ↗
Once again she would arrive at a foreign place. Once again be the newcomer, an outsider, the one who did not belong. She knew from experience that she would quickly have to ingratiate herself with her new masters to avoid being rejected or, in more dire cases, punished. Then there would be the phase where she would have to sharpen her senses in order to see and hear as acutely as possible so that she could assimilate quickly all the new customs and the words most frequently used by the group she was to become a part of--so that finally, she would be judged on her own merits. ↗
I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining of two people. What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the great revolutions of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens. If you lose the key, the door may never be unlocked. It is in our bodies that we lose or begin our freedom, in our bodies that we accept or end our slavery. So I wrote this book for my friend, with whom I have lived and will die free. ↗
Why are you dressed as a man?" Neeva said. "Why do you act like..." She paused. "Why do you act like... like one of them?" Her voice rose, challenging and accusatory. "Them," she said again. "Where women aren't human, aren't people, just things--objects. Them." She jabbed a thumb toward the rear window, where surely one of the Doll Maker's men followed unseen. "Oh, they'll show you a real man. They'll turn you into a real woman. They'll fuck you hard, you'll want it, but what you want never actually matters because everything is about their own ego. Them." Neeva stopped for air; a long, greedy inhale. "Why?" she said. "Why would you--a woman"--she spat out the word--"you who should know what it feels like to be called a cunt and a bitch and a whore just because you voiced an opinion, to be told you're fat or ugly as a way to make your argument worthless, that you're stuck-up, repressed, and in denial of your true feelings when you find them repulsive. Why would you be one of them? What's wrong with you? ↗
#human-trafficking #men #misogyny #modern-slavery #repression
In accepting and defending the social institution of slavery, the Greeks were harder-hearted than we but clearer-headed; they knew that labor as such is slavery, and that no man can feel a personal pride in being a laborer. A man can be proud of being a worker – someone, that is, who fabricates enduring objects, but in our society, the process of fabrication has been so rationalized in the interests of speed, economy and quantity that the part played by the individual factory employee has become too small for it to be meaningful to him as work, and practically all workers have been reduced to laborers. It is only natural, therefore, that the arts which cannot be rationalized in this way – the artist still remains personally responsible for what he makes – should fascinate those who, because they have no marked talent, are afraid, with good reason, that all they have to look forward to is a lifetime of meaningless labor. This fascination is not due to the nature of art itself, but to the way in which an artists works; he, and in our age, almost nobody else, is his own master. The idea of being one’s own master appeals to most human beings, and this is apt to lead to the fantastic hope that the capacity for artistic creation is universal, something nearly all human beings, by virtue, not by some special talent, but due to their humanity, could do if they tried. ↗
