Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind and this trade [in Indian slaves] as one of the most unjust, evil, and cruel among them.
On occassion, slaves in Spanish New Orleans owned slaves, whose labor they could appropriate toward purchasing their own freedom, or whose ownership they could trade as a partial payment on their own freedom.
I studied African American studies, and I read these slave narratives and the escape narratives of people that were able to escape slavery and always found those stories intriguing and powerful and inspiring.
From deep in the slave hut is somebody calling over 150 years to all of our experiences and all of our ideas on human respect, and all of our ideas on dignity. And I felt like that's just incredibly powerful.
How can we live in freedom and maintain that we are entitled to *anything* that we can't get without the labor of others? Remember, if we are entitled to the labor of others, that makes slaves of those others.
I'm a slave to the culture, so I see an Audi, a Denali, or an Escalade, my neighbor got the four-door Porsche. I have a really nice truck. But it's a Durango and I like frontin'! I like to ride by and show off.
Too often a story is examined through biased eyes, without a sensitivity for everyone who forged it. It's seen from the point of view of the great white savior, and rarely is the perspective of the slave a part.
In Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Angola and Cameroon maize is a staple, yet the earliest mention of maize in west Africa comes from a Portuguese document that lists it as being loaded on to slave ships bound for Africa.
But really, for the most part - doing a prequel is great because you do have room to kind of free this character and how they got to where they are instead of being a slave to exactly what the previous actor did.
There's a history of enslaved African-Americans having to make their slave masters comfortable. This business of what we call skinning and grinning - that is something African-Americans are very much cognizant of.
Do not commit yourself to anybody or anything, for that is to be a slave, a slave to every man Above all, keep yourself free of commitments and obligations - they are the device of another to get you into his power
Slave narratives had their greatest influence on public opinion and on literature in the U.S. between 1830 and 1860. After Reconstruction's defeat, their urgency of tone was replaced by the softer one of reminiscence.
If there be a human being who is freer than I, then I shall necessarily become his slave. If I am freer than any other, then he will become my slave. Therefore equality is an absolutely necessary condition of freedom.
We can constitutionally extirpate slavery at this time. But if we fail to do this, then unless we intend hereafter to violate the Constitution, we shall have a fugitive slave law in operation whenever the war is over.
It's funny: over time, if you're fortunate, you build a nice career, and you have these interesting moments, and I would not, looking back, trade any of them - 'Red Tails,' '12 Years a Slave' and 'Undercover Brother.'
White Americans believe we've made more progress since the end of slavery in 1865 than do black Americans for whom '12 Years a Slave' documents a collective memory, passed down in the genes and by the lore of generations.
Part of the elements of the electoral college is creation. Certainly it was created in slave states and them wanting to balance power, but there's not a specific set of the country always determining who the president is.
Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I am free, that I don't belong anymore to anyone, that I'm not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.
I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I dont know what she was--anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted.
My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington's troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave.
The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.
If there be any plausible reason for supposing that we have the right to legislate on the slave interests of the District, you cannot put down the investigation of the subject out of doors, by refusing to receive petitions.
The capital amassed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through various forms of slave economy is still in circulation, said De Jong, still bearing interest, increasing many times over and continually burgeoning anew.
He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.
I have scars from every film I have made. There is nothing to protect actors. They treat you worse than a dog. You work like a slave, and you know, I like it. That is the way it should be. Every film should be like your last.
I went to Zanzibar on holiday and there was a lot there about civil rights and there was a museum, where there are old slave chambers. It was horrible to go to and they've still got the chains there. It opens your eyes a lot.
When I put a quarter into an arcade machine or call up an emulated game on my computer, I do it to escape the world that is a slave to the time that makes things fall apart. I have never played these games to occupy my world.
If I can go three grandmothers back and find a slave, that means someone else can go three grandmothers back and find a slave owner. When you interrogate your histories, it forces you to rethink who you are and where you are.
There are cases where the slave does not know his servitude and where it is necessary to bring the seed of his liberation to him from the outside: his submission is not enough to justify the tyranny which is imposed upon him.
Of all insults, the temporary condescension of a master to a slave is the most outrageous and galling. That potentate who most condescends, mark him well; for that potentate, if occasion come, will prove your uttermost tyrant.
Trans people have been repeatedly told that we don't have the right to live. And Black people have been told that by our slave masters and continue to be told that by society. We have, generationally, bled this kind of hatred.
When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I've turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I'm still a slave, only my price tag is higher.
I've heard it said that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. To that end, I think it's worth noting that the very first police force in America was created as a 'patrol' to keep slave populations under control.
I believe that the only possible reason for our being here is to serve in some form or another but that the form is not always readily found or recognized. And I've noticed that those who refuse to serve often wind up as slaves.
All the principal people in the town are concerned in the slave trade, and their chief wealth consists in the number of slaves they possess; therefore there is little chance of the trade being, for many years, totally abolished.
A stylish person, for me, is one who draws your eye without necessarily being showy; they wear clothes that are beautifully cut, flatter the wearer, and show that they are not impervious to fashion, but not a slave to it either.
The laws recognize no obligation on the part of the slave to labor for or serve his master. If he refuse to labor, the law will not interfere to compel him. The master must do his own flogging, as in the case of an ox or a horse.
My grandmother lived to be 100 years old. Her grandmother was a slave, yet she was a college graduate in the Spellman class of 1917. She taught art for 50 years and she saved her Social Security checks for her children's education.
The Spanish Civil War, Britain was not involved in it. Going back a bit, there was the naval blockade to stop the slave trade in the 19th century; that was morally just. Shame they didn't bother to abolish slavery at the same time.
You can't understand what happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson, you can't understand what happened to Eric Garner in New York City, without understanding this narrative of racial difference that was created during the slave years.
If you think you have the right to health care, you are saying basically that I am your slave. I provide health care... My staff and technicians provide it... If you have a right to health care, then you have a right to their labor.
I was an English major in college who concentrated in African-American literature and culture. So I read quite a few slave narratives and stories of escape, and I grew up in Ohio, which was a common stop on the Underground Railroad.
What a woman does or does not do to her face is personal. And as with most other things, makeup or a lack thereof can serve as either a prison or a fortress commanded by the mind: you can become a slave to it, or it can set you free.
In slave times the Negro was kept subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of the scourging, but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed.
There will always be some films that the audience would like and some that they don't. But if I start becoming a slave to appreciation, I will be subjecting myself and my talent to one particular type of taste. I don't want to do that.
Neither can men, by the same principles, be considered as lands, goods, or houses, among possessions. It is necessary that all property should be inferiour to its possessor. But how does the slave differ from his master, but by chance?
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.
That was the moment I wanted to use bitcoin: when I saw Harriet Tubman on a $20 bill. It's like, when you see all the slave movies, it's like, why you gotta keep reminding us about slavery? Why don't you put Michael Jordan on a $20 bill?
I think he was explicit that it was a slave labor situation, but I was not alarmed at that point, because there were so many tragedies involved in that war. That was the first time I had any indication that something was sort of strange.
I starred in a Broadway play that was Sidney Poitier's first directing job and the cast was Lou Gossett, Cicely Tyson, Diana Ladd and I played a Jewish kid who offered himself as a slave to two Columbia University students as reparations.