Quotes about Freedom

At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon the slave and slaveholder.

When I think that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready to ask, Does a righteous God govern the universe? and for what does he hold the thunders in his right hand, if not to smite the oppressor, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the spoiler?

You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free!

Geological trees do not flourish among slaves.

Love the natural, peaceful, and independent Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.

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.

It remains now to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause entirely removed from the Republic.

While you have strong frames and robust constitutions, you have not the gift of intellect—you could not think for yourselves—you could not provide for yourselves—so the Lord in his infinite goodness has given you kind masters to think for you—[laughter].

While I lived with my master in St. Michael's, there was a white young man, a Mr. Wilson, who proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the instruction of such slaves as might be disposed to learn to read the New Testament. We met but three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks, both class-leaders, with many others, came upon us with sticks and other missiles, drove us off, and forbade us to meet again. Thus ended our little Sabbath school in the pious town of St. Michael's.

Once you learn to read, you'll be forever free. Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

I was suddenly and sharply interrupted by my good old friend Sojourner Truth with a question, Frederick, is God dead? No, I answered, and because God is not dead slavery can only end in blood.

The mark of man is initiative, but the mark of woman is cooperation. Man talks about freedom; woman about sympathy, love, sacrifice. Man cooperates with nature; woman cooperates with God. Man was called to till the earth, to rule over the earth; woman to be the bearer of a life that comes from God.