Best Abolitionist Quotes & Sayings

Hillary Clinton began a New York thank-you tour Friday by calling for the abolition of the Electoral College. No wonder Arkansas never liked her. She hasn't been in office three days and already she's an abolitionist. — Argus Hamilton

Jeb'd said it was harder for a pretty girl to find work; even white men liked flowers, whether red or pink or blue. — Shannon Celebi

That was when I realized we weren't born to be
slaves. It was ignorant for any man to think he could be the master of another. We were all meant to be free, and somewhere there were good people helping to heal this broken world. — Jay Grewal

This is central to the development of feminist abolitionist theories and practices: we have to learn how to think and act and struggle against that which is ideologically constituted as "normal". — Angela Y. Davis

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began. — Abraham Lincoln

In Europe, populism is sort of a dirty word, but we have this wonderful history of populism in America, including the abolitionist populists and the white and black populists working together in the nineteenth century. — Zephyr Teachout

It's both a tremendous obligation and honor to undertake the unfulfilled work of the best of our abolitionist precursors--those who did not only want the abolition of white supremacist slavery and normalized anti-Black violence, but who also recognized that the greatest promise of abolitionism was a comprehensive transformation of a civilization in which the sanctity of white civil society was defined by its capacity to define 'community' and 'safety' through the effective of its ability to wage racial genocides. The present day work of (..) abolition has to proceed with organic recognition of its historical roots in liberation struggles against slavery, colonization, and conquest--and therefore struggle to constantly develop effective, creative, and politically educating forms of radical movement against the genocidal white supremacist state and the society to which it's tethered. — Dylan Rodriguez

Many of these slaveholding populists were celebrated by posterity as tribunes of the common people. Meanwhile, the self-made Hamilton, a fervent abolitionist and a staunch believer in meritocracy, was villainized in American history textbooks as an apologist of privilege and wealth. — Ron Chernow

In such a condition of affairs, the practical difference between the abolitionist and the sympathizer, to the man who lost his slave and could not recover it, was very nebulous. — John Sergeant Wise

Every time you drink a glass of milk or eat a piece of cheese, you harm a mother. Please go vegan. — Gary L. Francione

A staunch abolitionist, Hamilton was one of the founding members of the New York Manumission Society. He was a trustee and namesake of Hamilton-Oneida Academy, an upstate New York school dedicated to educating Native-American boys. — Eric Schneiderman

Despite my deep unease about animal advocates working for things we don't want and asking for changes we don't believe in, I am not an "abolitionist." First, the abolition of animal slavery will no more end speciesism by itself than the abolition of American slavery ended racism. To change the world, I think we should aim higher. Second, I'm increasingly convinced that no matter who uses the term, it hides a slur. When used to refer to others, it connotes zealotry and obstructionism, and when taken as self-definition, it is seen as an attack by anyone who does not apply it to herself. Yes, it's a highly defensible moral philosophy, right up there with Peter Singer's application of Utilitarianism to animal liberation, and Tom Regan's Theory of Rights, but like those other intellectual concepts, it's useful only so far as it engenders right action. — Sarahjane Blum

The success of the abolitionist movement lay in its making real for people in Britain and America the slave ship's pervasive and utterly instrumental terror, which was indeed its defining feature. — Marcus Rediker

On a hot summer night in July 1836, an organized mob broke into the shop where the abolitionist weekly was printed, dismantled the press, and tore up the edition that was about to be circulated. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

the struggle for an abolitionist democracy is aspiring to create the institutions that will truly allow for a democratic society. What — Angela Y. Davis

The power of the Bible is most evident in its ability to change lives. It can transform a wealthy Italian playboy into a saint (Saint Francis of Assisi). By its amazing grace, it can transform a debauching, murderous slave trader into a humble abolitionist (John Newton). It can transfigure prostitutes into women of virtue, cowards into rocks of the church, and the proud into the meek. — Anonymous

Viewing the man from the genuine abolitionist ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed cold, tardy, weak and unequal to the task. But, viewing him from the sentiments of his people, which as a statesman he was bound to respect, then his actions were swift, bold, radical and decisive. Taking the man in the whole, balancing the tremendous magnitude of the situation, and the necessary means to ends, Infinite Wisdom has rarely sent a man into the world more perfectly suited to his mission than Abraham Lincoln. — Frederick Douglass

I was a woman before I was an abolitionist. I must speak for the women. — Lucy Stone

I'm a prison abolitionist because the prison system as it is set up is just not working. It's horrible. — Ava DuVernay

In the suffragist and abolitionist era, there were a lot of white women and some black men and women who argued for the old hierarchy and against universal adult suffrage - often on religious grounds. — Gloria Steinem

... in recent history the Democrat Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what's best for black people. Somehow it's been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man. — Elbert Guillory

The stance I took was there is no room for racial bias anywhere in sports. I believe that was basically all I said about it. Certainly I was cast as an abolitionist. Death threats came. Hate mail came. — Barry Larkin

Harriet Beecher Stowe was thirty-nine when she began Uncle Tom's Cabin. She had given birth to seven children and seen one die. She wrote her book to be serialized in an abolitionist newspaper. Much of it she composed on the kitchen table in between the cooking, mending, tending to her house. — Sophy Burnham

How many movements began when an aesthetic encounter indelibly changed our past perceptions of the world? It was an abolitionist's print, not logical argument, which dealt the final blow to the slave trade - the broadside of Description of a Slave Ship (1789). — Sarah Lewis

The most important form of incremental change is the decision by the individual to become vegan. Veganism, or the eschewing of all animal products, is more than a matter of diet or lifestyle; it is a political and moral statement in which the individual accepts the principle of abolition in her own life. Veganism is the one truly abolitionist goal that we can all achieve-and we can achieve it immediately, starting with our next meal. — Gary L. Francione

Many abolitionists have yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights. — Susan B. Anthony

A major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more humane, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system. How, then, do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately attending to the needs of prisoners- calling for less violent conditions, an end to state sexual assault, improved physical and mental health care, greater access to drug programs, better educational work opportunities, unionization of prison labor, more connections with families and communities, shorter or alternative sentencing- and at the same time call for alternatives to sentencing altogether, no more prison construction, and abolitionist strategies that question the place of prison in our future? — Angela Y. Davis

We've actually bought quite a number of historical pieces. We are doing a piece on the abolitionists, Harper's Ferry and the abolitionist John Brown with Paul Giamatti. — John Landgraf

Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. — Paul Hawken

Louis Brandeis beloved uncle, Lewis Dembitz, was an ardent abolitionist. His mother was an abolitionist in Kentucky at a time when Brandeis remembered hearing the shot from the confederate soldiers after the second battle of Bull Run. Amazing to think that he heard that and I studied with one of his last law clerks in college. And that encapsulates almost all of American history. — Jeffrey Rosen

This is the biggest lot of abolitionist trash I ever saw."
"No it isn't," I said. "That book wasn't even written until a century after slavery was abolished."
"Then why the hell are they still complaining about it? — Octavia E. Butler

HIt is surely certain - as certain as one can be about any historical events - that the fall of New World slavery could not have occurred if there had been no abolitionist movements. We can thus end on a positive note of willed achievement, a century's moral achievement that may have no parallel. It is an achievement, despite its many limitations, that should help inspire some confidence in other movements for social change, for not being condemned to fully accept the world into which we are born. — David Brion Davis

In his fierce, bold determination to see the lives of modern-day slaves up close, Benjamin Skinner reminds me of the British abolitionist of two hundred years ago, Zachary Macaulay, who once traveled on a slave ship across the Atlantic, taking notes. Skinner goes everywhere, from border crossings to brothels to bargaining sessions with dealers in human beings, to bring us this vivid, searing account of the wide network of human trafficking and servitude which spans today's globe. — Adam Hochschild

Veganism is about nonviolence. It is about not engaging in harm to other sentient beings; to oneself; and to the environment upon which all beings depend for life. In my view, the animal rights movement is, at its core, a movement about ending violence to all sentient beings. It is a movement that seeks fundamental justice for all. It is an emerging peace movement that does not stop at the arbitrary line that separates humans from nonhumans. — Gary L. Francione