#slavery

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. ↗

— Theodore Parker

#atheism #barack-obama #justice #martin-luther-king-jr #morality

Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#life

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery. ↗

— Wayne Dyer

#choose #form #freedom #freedom means #less

Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#siblings #slavery #family

Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses who led us out of slavery. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#because #claim #closely #everyone #great

There are two things that have always haunted me: the brutality of the European traders and the stories I've heard about Africans selling other Africans into slavery. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#always #brutality #european #haunted #heard

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#arguing #feel #hear #him #i

Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. ↗

— George Mason

#discourages #manufactures #slavery

The problem for those who assert biblical authority in support of traditional definitions of marriage is that one could, with equal validity, assert that the lending of money or certain kinds of haircuts are forbidden by God, or that slavery and the subjugation of women are authorized by the Lord. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#authority #authorized #certain #certain kinds #could

Can you look forward to the future of our country and imagine any state of things in which, with slavery still existing, we should be assured of permanent peace? I cannot. ↗

— Robert Dale Owen

#assured #cannot #country #existing #forward