Quotes Tagged "slaves"

I see things in windows and I say to myself that I want them. I want them because I want to belong. I want to be liked by more people, I want to be held in higher regard than others. I want to feel valued, so I say to myself to watch certain shows. I watch certain shows on the television so I can participate in dialogues and conversations and debates with people who want the same things I want. I want to dress a certain way so certain groups of people are forced to be attracted to me. I want to do my hair a certain way with certain styling products and particular combs and methods so that I can fit in with the In-Crowd. I want to spend hours upon hours at the gym, stuffing my body with what scientists are calling 'superfoods', so that I can be loved and envied by everyone around me. I want to become an icon on someone's mantle. I want to work meaningless jobs so that I can fill my wallet and parentally-advised bank accounts with monetary potential. I want to believe what's on the news so that I can feel normal along with the rest of forever. I want to listen to the Top Ten on Q102, and roll my windows down so others can hear it and see that I am listening to it, and enjoying it. I want to go to church every Sunday, and pray every other day. I want to believe that what I do is for the promise of a peaceful afterlife. I want rewards for my 'good' deeds. I want acknowledgment and praise. And I want people to know that I put out that fire. I want people to know that I support the war effort. I want people to know that I volunteer to save lives. I want to be seen and heard and pointed at with love. I want to read my name in the history books during a future full of clones exactly like me. The mirror, I've noticed, is almost always positioned above the sink. Though the sink offers more depth than a mirror, and mirror is only able to reflect, the sink is held in lower regard. Lower still is the toilet, and thought it offers even more depth than the sink, we piss and shit in it. I want these kind of architectural details to be paralleled in my every day life. I want to care more about my reflection, and less about my cleanliness. I want to be seen as someone who lives externally, and never internally, unless I am able to lock the door behind me. I want these things, because if I didn't, I would be dead in the mirrors of those around me. I would be nothing. I would be an example. Sunken, and easily washed away.

It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used. (Describing, in 1685, the value to astronomers of the hand-cranked calculating machine he had invented in 1673.)

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

Abolition seemed a fantasy when Frederick Douglass called for all slaves to be released.

The severe household has no fierce slaves, but it is the affectionate mother.

The majority of people in Angola were not provided with any kind of schooling and were completely illiterate, very badly paid, and treated almost as slaves.

Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.

Slavery was regarded by Aristotle as an ordinance of nature, and so probably was it by the slaves themselves in olden time.

Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners.

I don't have an assistant. I make a lot of people around me my slaves, but no assistant.

Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves.

The fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves doesn't devalue what he wrote.

The augmentation of slaves weakens the states; and such a trade is diabolical in itself, and disgraceful to mankind.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.

Free men have arms; slaves do not.

What Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free state of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or 1,000 slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free state.

I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.

Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were slaves by birth, freedom fighters by temperament.