From the public-domain record · 81,371 quotes
Founders, statesmen and world leaders — cited from their collected works.
The figures
I felt somewhat surprised that I could be so much at ease in such company, but I found it then, as I have since, that the higher the gradation in intelligence and refinement, the farther removed are all artificial distinctions, and…
It has been a part of my mission to expose the absurdity of this spirit of caste and in some measure help to emancipate men from its control.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
That influence met me almost everywhere outside of pronounced anti-slavery circles, and sometimes even within them.
The abolition of slavery has not merely emancipated the negro, but liberated the whites; taken the lock from their tongues, and the fetters from their press.
The people of Harper’s Ferry have made wondrous progress in their ideas of freedom, of thought, and speech.
Everything about it is impressive, and suggestive of the transient character of human life and glory.
I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.
The span of human life is too short for the repetition of events which occur at the distance of fifty years.
But now that the results of the war had changed all this, I had for several years determined to return to my old home upon the first opportunity.
While slavery continued, of course this very natural desire could not be safely gratified; for my presence among slaves was dangerous to the public peace, and could no more be tolerated than could a wolf among sheep, or fire in a magazine.
By this current he was a master, and I a slave; but now our lives were verging towards a point where differences disappear, where even the constancy of hate breaks down, where the clouds of pride, passion, and selfishness vanish before the…
We had both been flung, by powers that did not ask our consent, upon a mighty current of life, which we could neither resist nor control.
He was to me no longer a slaveholder either in fact or in spirit, and I regarded him as I did myself, a victim of the circumstances of birth, education, law, and custom.
The conditions were favorable for remembrance of all his good deeds, and generous extenuation of all his evil ones.
But now that slavery was destroyed, and the slave and the master stood upon equal ground, I was not only willing to meet him, but was very glad to do so.
It would have been an invitation to the auction-block and the slave whip.
Had I been asked in the days of slavery to visit this man, I should have regarded the invitation as one to put fetters on my ankles and handcuffs on my wrists.
I, on my part, had traveled through the length and breadth of this country and of England, holding up this conduct of his in common with that of other slaveholders to the reprobation of all men who would listen to my words.
If it is attempted, by force or fraud to compel the colored people to stay there, they should by all means go--go quickly, and die if need be in the attempt.”...
The American people are bound, if they are or can be bound to anything, to keep the north gate of the South open to black and white and to all the people.
While, however, it may be the highest wisdom in the circumstances for the freedmen to stay where they are, no encouragement should be given to any measures of coercion to keep them there.
Exodus is medicine, not food; it is for disease, not health; it is not to be taken from choice, but necessity.
