c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The subject of British abolitionism has long been controversial, complex, and even baffling. It also raises the issue of moral progress in history - whether groups of reformers and even nations can succeed in eliminating deeply entrenched forms of human oppression, and if so, by what methods, misconceptions, and under what conditions?
— David Brion Davis
John's master, in allowing his slaves to marry, was much more liberal than most slave owners, who allowed their slaves no such liberty. As a rule negro men were not allowed to marry at all, any attempt to mate with the negro women brought swift, sure horrible punishment and the species were propagated by selected make negroes, who were kept for that purpose, the owners of this provileged negro, charged a fee of one out of every four of his offspring for his services. (Misspellings verbatim as written)
— Born In Slavery: Slave Narratives from The Federal Writers Project
As a people, we have been tolled farther and farther away from the facts of what we have done by the romanticizers, whose bait is nothing more than the wishful insinuation that we have done no harm. Speaking a public language of propaganda, uninfluenced by the real content of our history which we know only in a deep and guarded privacy, we are still in the throes of the paradox of the “gentleman and soldier.” However conscious it may have been, there is no doubt in my mind that all this moral and verbal obfuscation is intentional. Nor do I doubt that its purpose is to shelter us from the moral anguish implicit in our racism—an anguish that began, deep and mute, in the minds of Christian democratic freedom-loving owners of slaves.
— Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound
I will follow anyone... And tell everyone...How grateful I am...To the Western nations.
— Widad Akreyi
Thus the word "inhuman", in this book's title, refers to the unconscionable and unsuccessful goal of bestializing (in the form of pets as well as beasts of burden) a class of human beings.
— David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
What matters is that Southern slaves, at least on the larger plantations, created their own African American culture, which helped to preserve some of the more crucial areas of life and thought from white control or domination without significantly reducing the productivity and profitability of slave labor. Living within this African American culture, sustained by strong community ties, many slaves were able to maintain a certain sense of apartness, of pride, and of independent identity.
— David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
What matters is that Southern slaves, at least on the larger plantations, created their own AfricanAmerican culture, which helped to preserve some of the more crucial areas of life and thought from white control or domination without significantlyreducing the productivity and profitability of slave labor. Living within this African American culture, sustained by strong community ties, many slaves were able to maintain a certain sense of apartness, of pride, and of independent identity.
— David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!
— Frederick Douglass
Much as slavery in the United States was part of a larger Atlantic Slave System, so America’s War of Independence was an outgrowth of Europe’s Seven Years’ War — from 1756 to 1763 — and also a precursor or harbinger of the French and Haitian revolutions and of the subsequent Latin American wars for independence from Spain.
— David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
It was the mission of the Confederacy, ordinary whites were told, to carry out God’s design for an inferior and dependent race. Slaveholders claimed that owning slaves always entailed a duty and a burden — a duty and burden that defined the moral superiority of the South. And this duty and burden was respected by millions of nonslaveholding whites, who were prepared to defend it with their lives. That, perhaps, was the ultimate meaning of a “slave society.
— David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
Some Southerners effectively applied slave labor to the cultivation of corn, grain, and hemp (for making rope and twine), to mining and lumbering, to building canals and railroads, and even to the manufacture of textiles, iron, and other industrial products. Nevertheless, no other American region contained so many white farmers who merely subsisted on their own produce. The “typical” white Southerner was not a slaveholding planter but a small farmer who tried, often without success, to achieve both relative self-sufficiency and a steady income from marketable cash crops.
— David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
For Southerners, a white skin was the distinguishing badge of mind and intellect. Black skin was the sign that a given people had been providentially designed to serve as menial laborers, as what Hammond called the “mudsill” class necessary to support every society.
— David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
The difference between a free human and a human is not the word "free" it's the word "human" , because humanity can never be caged with the chains of slavery.
— M. Osman Baalbaki
She is a slave, with no way home.
— Heather Demetrios, Exquisite Captive
I cannot fail these girls by diverting my eyes from the invisible residue of slavery that clings to them like a shadow.
— Marquita Burke-DeJesus, Radically Ordinary
And oft the blessed time foretellsWhen all men shall be free;And musical, as silver bells,Their falling chains shall be.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poems on Slavery.
Earned money brings you security, borrowed money gets you slavery.
— Amit Kalantri
No matter what chains are broken, slavery is a condition of the heart.
— Marquita Burke-DeJesus, Radically Ordinary
The use of rape and enslavement as weapons of war MUST END!
— Widad Akreyi
For most of human history people owned other people. Then, only a hundred and fifty years ago, our ancestors figured out that was a bad idea. One day we’ll figure out, or our descendants will figure out, that people owning land they don’t live on or work is a bad idea too.
— Dennis Vickers, Mikawadizi Storms
The free worker receives a wage; the slave an education, food, care, clothing; the money that the master spends to keep the slave is drained little by little and in detail; one hardly perceives it.1
— Alexis de Tocqueville
We are determined to answer evil with GOOD, slavery with FREEDOM, rape with hope!We are against slavery, rape, beheading, torture, violations of human rights, corruption and misuse of religion!
— Widad Akreyi
The hardest memory of slavery that Rialla had to bear was not the lack of freedom
—  it was the lack of desiring freedom.
The reformer," Douglass explained in 1883, had "a difficult and disagreeable task before him. He has to part with old friends; break away from the beaten paths of society, and advance against the vehement protests of the most sacred sentiments of the human heart.
— James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics
They will raise, and raise with them their mother's side.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe
Out of slavery, freedom --yes, & roses from the pig's behind.
— Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems
Men have enslaved each other since they invented gods to forgive them for doing it.
— Seth Grahame-Smith
And they are ignorant that the purpose of the sword is to save every man from slavery.
— Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia: The Civil War
This was the face of slavery. To have nothing, and still have something more to lose.
— Lalita Tademy, Cane River
Then, somehow, I got caught up in one of Kevin's World War II books - a book of excerpts from the recollections of concentration camp survivors. Stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture, every possible degradation. As though the Germans had been trying to do in only a few years what the Americans had worked at for nearly two hundred. ... Like the Nazis, antebellum whites had known quite a bit about torture - quite a bit more than I ever wanted to learn.
— Octavia E. Butler, Kindred
It is with the oppressed, enslaved, African race that I cast in my lot; and if I wished anything, I would wish myself two shades darker, rather than one lighter.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Career is just posh slavery.
— Tom Hodgkinson, The Freedom Manifesto
Strange as it may seem, within plain sight of this same house, looking down from its commanding height upon it, was the Capitol. The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave's chains, almost commingled. A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol!
— Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave
Well," said St. Clare, "suppose that something shoul bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don't you think we should soon have another version of the Scripture doctrine? What flood of light would pour the church, all at once, and immediately it would be discovered that everything in the bible and reason went the other way.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Oh, as Dean says, nobody is free - never, except just for a few brief moments now and then, when the flash comes, or when as on my haystack night, the soul slips over into eternity for a little space. All the rest of our years we are slaves to something - traditions - conventions - ambitions - relations.
— L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs
...A vision from a universe where the Equal Rights Amendment--with its redefinition of personhood--is rejected by the house of deputies: A universe where to die is to become property and to be created outwith a gift of parental DNA is to be doomed to slavery.
— Charles Stross, Accelerando
they ask for water we give them seathey ask for bread we give them seathey ask for life we give them only the sea
— M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong!
I know of no evil that ever existed, nor can imagine any evil to exist, worse than the tearing of seventy or eighty thousand persons every year from their own land.
— William Pitt the Younger
The benevolent gentleman is sorry; but, then, the thing happens every day! One sees girls and mothers crying at these sales, always! it can't be helped, etc.; and he walks off, with his acquisition, in another direction.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can't live alone, you were born a slave. You may have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case you're a noble slave, or an intelligent servant, but you're not free. And you can't hold this up as your own tragedy, for your birth is a tragedy of Fate alone. Hapless you are, however, if life itself so oppresses you that you're forced to become a slave. Hapless you are if, having been born free, with the capacity to be isolated and self-sufficient, poverty should force you to live with others.
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
I ask no paradise on high, With cares on earth oppressed,The only heaven for which I sigh, Is rest, eternal rest.
— Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave
You may have bought my body, you may even have the papers to prove it, but don't fool yourself into thinking for a moment that my heart and mind were included in the purchase.
— Nenia Campbell, Bleeds My Desire
When I think of how much this world has suffered; when I think of how long our fathers were slaves, of how they cringed and crawled at the foot of the throne, and in the dust of the altar, of how they abased themselves, of how abjectly they stood in the presence of superstition robed and crowned, I am amazed.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a Negro. She was a slave, and salable as such.
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
You Say To People 'Throw Off Your Chains' And They Make New Chains For Themselves?
— Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
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 subjugation on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it: for man is an imitative animal.
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
A man is always a little shamefaced on his wedding day, like a fox caught in a baited trap, ensnared because his greed overcame his better judgment. The menfolk laughed at Charlie that spring day, and said he was caught for sure now. As the bride, I was praised and fussed over, as if I had won a prize or done something marvelous that no one ever did before, and I could not help feeling pleased and clever that I had managed to turn myself from an ordinary girl into a shining bride. Now I think it is a dirty lie. The man is the one who is winning the game that day, though they always pretend they are not, and the poor girl bride is led into a trap of hard work and harsh words, the ripping of childbirth and the drubbing of her man's fists. It is the end of being young, but no one tells her so. Instead they make over her, and tell her how lucky she is. I wonder do slaves get dressed up in finery on the day they are sold.
— Sharyn McCrumb, The Ballad of Frankie Silver
As he plods behind Cameron and Summer, he can’t help but stare at Summer’s exposed, glistening skin. His thoughts aren’t depraved or even mildly in the splasher. In fact, he focuses on the marks of cruelty crisscrossing her back, stomach, and shoulders. He trudges along, drenched, feet swollen, constantly searching for even a hint of a breeze, all while being forced to stare at the alarming network of burns traversing Summer’s delicate skin. This latticework of hate reveals a brutal truth—one he can scarcely comprehend. Yes, he’s glimpsed and felt her scars before, but this is the first time he’s really, truly seen the severity and extent of her life as a slave. With each step, he must digest the monstrosities of her past, leaving him utterly devastated.
— Laura Kreitzer, Burning Falls
The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.
— Ntozake Shange, Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo
The “pursuit of happiness” is such a key element of the “American (ideological) dream” that one tends to forget the contingent origin of this phrase: “We holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Where did the somewhat awkward “pursuit of happiness” come from in this famous opening passage of the US Declaration of Independence? The origin of it is John Locke, who claimed that all men had the natural rights of life, liberty, and property— the latter was replaced by “the pursuit of happiness” during negotiations of the drafting of the Declaration, as a way to negate the black slaves’ right to property.
— Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes
A freedom-fighter is a slave to freedom.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The light on her face was a lesson, a book that she hoped he would want to read, but he looked away from her...she did not want this man to leave her alone. He was kind. And she feared the loneliness of dreaming
— Caryl Phillips, Higher Ground
The old face, crinkled and dented with canals running every which way, pushed and shoved up against itself for a while, till a big old smile busted out from beneath 'em all, and his grey eyes fairly glowed. It was the first time I ever saw him smile free. A true smile. It was like looking at the face of God. And I knowed then, for the first time, that him being the person to lead the colored to freedom weren't no lunacy. It was something he knowed true inside him. I saw it clear for the first time. I knowed then, too, that he knowed what I was - from the very first.
— James McBride, The Good Lord Bird
Most of us spend all our working life dreaming of doing nothing, then when we end up doing nothing, we long for something. When we have neither longing, I think that is what they call living for the moment.
— Robert  Black, The Control Sickness
When we came out of the cookhouse, we found the boy's father, the Indian man who had been grazing the horses in the pasture, waiting for us. He wanted someone to tell his troubles to. He looked about guardedly, afraid that the Señora might overhear him.'Take a look at me' he said. I don't even know how old I am. When I was young, the Señor brought me here. He promised to pay me and give me a plot of my own. 'Look at my clothes' he said, pointing to the patches covering his body. 'I can't remember how many years I've been wearing them. I have no others. I live in a mud hut with my wife and sons. They all work for the Señor like me. They don't go to school. They don't know how to read or write; they don't even speak Spanish. We work for the master, raise his cattle and work his fields. We only get rice and plantains to eat. Nobody takes care of us when we are sick. The women here have their babies in these filthy huts.''Why don't you eat meat or at least milk the cows?' I asked.'We aren't allowed to slaughter a cow. And the milk goes to the calves. We can't even have chicken or pork - only if an animal gets sick and dies. Once I raised a pig in my yard' he went on. 'She had a litter of three. When the Señor came back he told the foreman to shoot them. That's the only time we ever had good meat.''I don't mind working for the Señor but I want him to keep his promise. I want a piece of land of my own so I can grow rice and yucca and raise a few chickens and pigs. That's all.' 'Doesn't he pay you anything?' Kevin asked. 'He says he pays us but he uses our money to buy our food. We never get any cash. Kind sirs, maybe you can help me to persuade the master . Just one little plot is all I want. The master has land, much land.'We were shocked by his tale. Marcus took out a notebook and pen. 'What's his name?'. He wrote down the name. The man didn't know the address. He only knew that the Señor lived in La Paz.Marcus was infuriated. 'When I find the owner of the ranch, I'll spit right in his eye. What a lousy bastard! I mean, it's really incredible'. 'That's just the way things are,' Karl said. 'It's sad but there's nothing we can do about it.
— Yossi Ghinsberg, Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival
Denial of climate change and degradation of environment for the purpose of economic prosperity is humiliation and slavery of the nature.
— M.F. Moonzajer
What's the story here, Karl?' Kevin asked.'Hard as it is to believe, these people are slaves,' Karl explained.'Slaves?' I asked skeptically.'Well, you might not call them that but they are virtual slaves. They don't receive any pay. They are dealt with harshly. They don't have anywhere else to go''What about the government? Don't they help?' Marcus asked.'The government?' Karl laughed. 'The government my eye! Those generals stay in power several years, make a bundle smuggling drugs, and once they're millionaires, they retire. Some other lousy generals take over from them, and history repeats itself. You think they give a shit what happens to a few lousy Indians?
— Yossi Ghinsberg, Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival
I am grateful, and would thank the Gods(if there were any to thank) that I have finally mastered this art of forgetting--of murdering the memory.
— Caryl Phillips, Higher Ground
He slid his hands to the back of her neck, fumbling for the necklace’s clasp. He undid it and held the chain of rubies up, red and gold in the flickering candlelight. “No shackles for us,” he said, “no matter how rich.
— Susanna Fraser, A Dream Defiant
A slave that acknowledges its enslavement is halfway to its liberation.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
e have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.
— Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
in this great land of the free we call it human trafficking. And so long as we don’t partake in the luxury, ignoring slavery is of no consequence. It is much easier to look away and ignore the victims. The person who ignores slavery justifies it by quickly deducting the victim is a willing participant hampered by misfortune.
— D'Andre Lampkin
Lincoln, Douglas and their contemporaries struggled to decide what the words “all men are created equal” really meant. Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln wrangled for 21 hours on seven stages. They made strategic choices and battled to gain support for different views of the future. Their powerful words changed and restricted each other. Lincoln and Douglas didn’t have answers; they had strong arguments.
— Georgiann Baldino, Following Lincoln as He Followed Douglas
We are slaves whose masters are dead. For we are mostly controlled by doctrines which were established centuries heretofore.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A realist is a slave to reality.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
So that originally, and Naturally, there is no such thing as Slavery. Joseph was rightfully no more a Slave to his brethren, then they were to him: and they no more Authority to Sell him, than they had to Slay him. [Genesis 37].
— Samuel Sewall, The Selling Of Joseph
His body, his mind, his soul, had, for years, served only for the profit of others. He had his own people to whom he was pledged. Three million. They were the currency of his freedom.
— Colum McCann, TransAtlantic
The Irish were poor, but not enslaved. He had come here to hack away at the ropes that held American slavery in place. Sometimes it withered him just to keep his mind steady. He was aware that the essence of proper intelligence was the embrace of contradiction. And the recognition of complexity was to be balanced against the need for simplicity. He was still a slave. Fugitive. If he returned to Boston he could be kidnapped at any time, taken south, strapped to a tree, whipped. His owners. They would make a spectacle of his fame. They had tried to silence him for many years already. No longer. He had been given a chance to speak out against what had held him in chains. And he would continue to do so until the links lay in pieces at his feet.
— Colum McCann, TransAtlantic
Slavery provides comfort to the oppressor. Even more than comfort, it provides power over those who witness. Slavery is, after all, a luxury. Slavery is a distraction, so long as the onlooker is not the victim. Slavery is cheap labor, an outlet for aggression, and, so we’ve learned over the years, a meaningless object to fulfill sexual desires.
— D'Andre Lampkin
Common sense will tell us, thatthe power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, themost improper to defend us.
— Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Slavery is not a horror safely confined to the past; it continues to exist throughout the world, even in developed countries like France and the United States. Across the world slaves work and sweat and build and suffer. Slaves in Pakistan may have made the shoes you are wearing and the carpet you stand on. Slaves in the Caribbean may have put sugar in your kitchen and toys in the hands of your children. In India they may have sewn the shirt on your back and polished the ring on your finger. They are paid nothing. Slaves touch your life indirectly as well. They made the bricks for the factory that made the TV you watch. In Brazil slaves made the charcoal that tempered the steel that made the springs in your car and the blade on your lawnmower. Slaves grew the rice that fed the woman that wove the lovely cloth you've put up as curtains. Your investment portfolio and your mutual fund pension own stock in companies using slave labor in the developing world. Slaves keep your costs low and returns on your investments high.
— Kevin Bales
Often, men want money to get women, or to use women to get money, or both at the same time.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Antislavery idealists might prefer to live in some better world, which like all such places was too good to be true. The American nation in 1790, however, was a real world, laden with legacies like slavery, and therefore too true to be good.
— Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Only by acknowledging the full extent of slavery's full grip on U.S. Society - its intimate connections to present day wealth and power, the depth of its injury to black Americans, the shocking nearness in time of its true end - can we reconcile the paradoxes of current American life.
— Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
Marriage without love is just one more twisted form of slavery.
— Margarita Engle, The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist
In every aspect and among almost every demographic, how American society digested and processed the long, dark chapter between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the civil rights movement has been delusion.
— Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
One could call a master a good master because he did not whip his slaves, but ultimately he was still and owner of men, and men were not made to be owned.
— Nick Lake, In Darkness
In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery
— Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures
George, I know you’re tired. But President Lincoln, he didn’t free us to be lazy and no good. He freed us to work hard and improve ourselves.”-George’s Grandmother.
— George Dawson, Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98
Even though we are peripheral to the slavery, our action is necessary to overcome a horrific evil.
— Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Inner slavery is even worse than outward slavery
—  and inner freedom is even better than outward freedom.
You'll see some bad things, but if you didn't see them, they'd still be happening.
— Paula Fox, The Slave Dancer
To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.
— Idries Shah, Reflections
You are not property. If you choose to leave, no one will stop you.
— Elizabeth Vaughan, Warprize
I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.
— Octavia E. Butler
On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder...but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject...we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history.
— Brandi L. Bates
Although slavery has long been a part of human history, American chattel slavery represents a case of human trauma incomparable in scope, duration and consequence to any other incidence of human enslavement.
— Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
The brightest skies are always foreshadowed by dark clouds
— Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
In accepting and defending the social institution of slavery, the Greeks were harder-hearted than we but clearer-headed; they knew that labor as such is slavery, and that no man can feel a personal pride in being a laborer. A man can be proud of being a worker – someone, that is, who fabricates enduring objects, but in our society, the process of fabrication has been so rationalized in the interests of speed, economy and quantity that the part played by the individual factory employee has become too small for it to be meaningful to him as work, and practically all workers have been reduced to laborers. It is only natural, therefore, that the arts which cannot be rationalized in this way – the artist still remains personally responsible for what he makes – should fascinate those who, because they have no marked talent, are afraid, with good reason, that all they have to look forward to is a lifetime of meaningless labor. This fascination is not due to the nature of art itself, but to the way in which an artists works; he, and in our age, almost nobody else, is his own master. The idea of being one’s own master appeals to most human beings, and this is apt to lead to the fantastic hope that the capacity for artistic creation is universal, something nearly all human beings, by virtue, not by some special talent, but due to their humanity, could do if they tried.
— W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand
The oppressor is never as free as they think they are
— Darnell Lamont Walker
The thing about oppression is this: when you hold someone down, you, too, have to be there to make sure they don't move.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
One of them confessed to Paul that his tribe had heard stories about the fiercely cannibalistic ways of white men. Paul's first instinct was to laugh him off as a simpleminded fool. But the legend hadn't been conjured from thin air. When Paul tried to assure him that white men didn't eat black men, the man confronted him with a direct challenge: explain why they bought and sold Africans as if they were cattle, not human beings."Why do you come from nobody knows where, and carry off our men, and women, and children?" the man asked Paul. "Do you not fatten them in your far country and eat them?
— Monte Reel, Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure That Took the Victorian World by Storm
...I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere. I hear my father-in-law's response: 'Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don't tell *me* about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes that they are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's! Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses! You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!' Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?
— David Mitchell
Look at meI am the life in a wastelandLook at meI am the slavery through the agesLook at meI am the mirror of the worldLook at meI am the illusion I’ve fought forLook at meI’m still loving youand I keep being herefor you, for me,and for what’s worth breathing
— Rixa White
Life has been reduced to a series of long periods of boredom in the office punctuated by high-octane “experiences” which you can rack up on your list of things to do before you die. That’s not really living: that is slavery with the occasional circus thrown in.
— Tom Hodgkinson, Brave Old World: A Practical Guide To Husbandry Or The Fine Art Of Looking After
A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well.
— Glen Chambers, United States History For Christian Schools
What is it like to be so free - so trapped, but so free? What kind of bird sings only when caught? What kind of slave outshines and rises above her master?
— Courtney M. Privett, Mayfly Requiem
Isn't it funny how freedom is only another word for slavery?
— Lionel Suggs
The slaves of today will become the tyrants of tomorrow--the proletariat overthrows the hegemon to become the hegemon itself, only to be eventually overthrown by a proto-hegemon that will in turn lose its position. It is this dizzying cycle that keeps humanity chasing the tail it lost millennia ago
— Miguel Syjuco
aesthetic isn't simply about good design for good design's sake.
— Noah Kerner
Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.
— Elon Musk
The idea that 20% of the features will get you 80% of the value may well be correct, but it also means that on important tasks, you're giving the customers B-grade experieence where it matters most.
— Des Traynor
Religion is the product of organizations called churches
— Sunday Adelaja
With the consumer Internet, if you're not embarrassed by your first product release, you've launched too late. Everyone wants their product to be shiny, great, and revolutionary, so they take too long in the development cycle to build this really shiny thing, when in fact time really matters.
— Reid Hoffman
The best Products are customized not standardized.
— Carsten K. Rath
92% of respondents reported that a positive recommendation from a friend,family member, or someone they trust is the biggest influence on whether they buy a product or service.
— Paul M. Rand, Highly Recommended: Harnessing the Power of Word of Mouth and Social Media to Build Your Brand and Your Business
Giving is an act of generosity.Giving is sowing a seed.The seed will produce great harvest of fruits.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Some stories, some visions, demand celluloid film and what it can deliver.
— Kodak Eastman
Not since the original Mac had a clarity of product vision so propelled a company into the future. " If anybody was ever wondering why Apple is on the earth, I would hold up this as a good example
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
It’s not enough to love your product. You have to love your customers, too, every single one—those who complain the most are the ones who control the keys to your survival.
— Ken  Goldstein, Endless Encores: Repeating Success Through People, Products, and Profits
If I do my best and produce the best products, that is my purpose, then I shall definitely be compensated. The by product will come when the product is good.
— Sunday Adelaja
Every work you do should be done unto the Lord and your love to God must show in the quality of your product
— Sunday Adelaja
Designer turns daily common objects to sexy and interesting stuff but not necessarily functional.
— Baris Gencel
If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?
— Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.
— Roberto Bolaño, The Insufferable Gaucho
You can't expect everyone to have the same dedication as you.
— Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid
You are your own worst enemy. If you can learn to stop expecting impossible perfection, in yourself and others, you may find the happiness that has always eluded you.
— Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon
If you expect nothing, you can never be disappointed.
— Tonya Hurley, Homecoming
He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.
— Robert Jordan, New Spring
After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice.
— Tom Perrotta, Little Children
I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed.
— Julia Glass, I See You Everywhere
I wasn't disappointed. My expectations had been met.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
I hope you do not let anyone else's expectations direct the course of your life.
— Julianne Donaldson, Edenbrooke
...“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,” exclaimed Anne. “You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs. Lynde says, ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.’ But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.”...
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.
— Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Mrs. Lynde says, 'Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.
— L.M. Montgomery
The secret self knows the anguish of our attachments and assures us that letting go of what we think we must have to be happy is the same as letting go of our unhappiness.
— Guy Finley
If you expect nothing, you can never be disappointed.Apart from a few starry-eyed poets or monks living on a mountaintop somewhere, however, we all have expectations. We not only have them, we need them. They fuel our dreams, our hopes, and our lives like some super-caffeinated energy drink.
— Tonya Hurley, Homecoming
You see what you expect to see, Severus.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
There were times . . . when it occurred to me that I was repeating my mother's life. Usually this thought struck me as funny. But if I happened to be tired, or if there were extra bills to pay and no money to pay them with, it seemed awful. I'd think 'This isn't the way our lives are supposed to be going.' Then I'd think 'Half the world has the same idea.
— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?
— Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Excellence is the Result of Caring more than others think is Wise, Risking more than others think is Safe, Dreaming more than others think is Practical, and Expecting more than others think is Possible.
— Ronnie Oldham
I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected — an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows.
— Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
What's the first sign of a lurking, hidden expectation you didn't know you had? Pain! People don't do what we want, things don't happen quickly enough, the weather doesn't cooperate, our bodies don't cooperate. Why are these moments so painful? Because our minds are focused on a static, unchanging, me-centric picture while the dynamic unfolding of a broader life continues around us. There is nothing wrong with expectations per se, as it's appropriate to set goals and work, properly, towards their fruition. But the instant we feel pain over life not going "my way," our expectations have clearly taken an improper turn. Any moment you feel resistance or pain, look for -- and then let go of -- the hidden expectation. Practice giving yourself over to what "you" don't want. Let the line at the store be long. Let the other person interrupt you. Let the nervousness make you shake. Be where your body is, not where your mind is trying to take you.
— Guy Finley
Life was easier when you stopped caring, when you stopped expecting things to get better.
— Cora Carmack, Finding It
Expect everything so that nothing comes unexpected.
— Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
— Samuel Johnson, The Idler; Poems
Thanks to our artists, we pretend well, living under canopies of painted clouds and painted gods, in halls of marble floors across which the sung Masses paint hope in deep impatsi of echo. We make of the hollow world a fuller, messier, prettier place, but all our inventions can't create the one thing we require: to deserve any fond attention we might accidentally receive, to receive any fond attention we don't in the course of things deserve. We are never enough to ourselves because we can never be enough to another. Any one of us walks into any room and reminds its occupant that we are not the one they most want to see. We are never the one. We are never enough.
— Gregory Maguire, Mirror Mirror
No expectations mean there is no risk of disappointment.
— Jude Morgan, Indiscretion
You can devise all the plans in the world, but if you don’t welcome spontaneity; you will just disappoint yourself.
— Abigail Biddinger
Eccentricity may be diverting, Mama, but it is out of place in a wife: certainly in my wife!
— Georgette Heyer, Sylvester
I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living--all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents.
— Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Expectations should not always be taken as reality
—  because you never know when you will be disappointed.
On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
— Charles Babbage
When we pick up the newspaper at breakfast, we expect - we even demand - that it brings us momentous events since the night before...We expect our two-week vacations to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless..We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for excellence, to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy...to go to 'a church of our choice' and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God and to be God. Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.
— Daniel J. Boorstin
Be realistic with your expectations. I'd really like to cuddle a unicorn, but it aint going to happen.
— India Knight, The Thrift Book
Nowadays, I dont have expectations, and this way she beats them all.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
I am afraid I shall disappoint people's expectations dreadfully.
— Jude Morgan, Indiscretion
Often expecting immediate returns for goodness in this world is a sign of a normal human being
— Adil Adam Memon
Unhappiness lies in that gap between our talents and our expectations.
— Sebastian Horsley
This was our last night. We only had one curtain call, Bree. And I thought they were going to give us a standing ovation, but no-o-o-. Do you know why half the audience stood up?""To get a head start on the traffic," Bree said."To get a head start on the traffic," Antonia agreed in indignation. "I mean, here we are, dancing and singing our little guts out, and all those folks want to do is get to bed early. I ask you, whatever happened to common courtesy? Whatever happened to decent manners? Doesn't anyone care about craft anymore? And on top of that, it's not even nice.
— Mary Stanton, Defending Angels
I believe we must do things in our lives for the right reasons, because we enjoy doing them, with no expectation of getting something back in return. Otherwise, we are constantly being disappointed." She moved her turquoise bracelet back and forth on her wrist. "So I had two sons, John and Richard, because I wanted to, not because I thought they would rescue me in old age. I got out of all social organizations and clubs in my fifties so I could spend time with my grandchildren, not because they would give something back to Jack and me later on, but because that was what I wanted to do--and I have loved doing it. Believe me, these have been selfish decisions.
— Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
The trouble you're expecting never happens
—  it's always something that sneaks up the other way.
I can't imagine going on when there are no more expectations.
— Edith Evans
He expected too much from people, that was the problem, Ethan thought. He expected too much from life.
— Anne Frasier, Hush
I've always liked rooms where the party hasn't started yet...I love the feeling that anything could happen. After the party, when anything already has happened, there's usually the inevitable fact to face that anything wasn't all you'd hoped it to be.
— Jillian Lauren, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem
The only things that I expect, are miracles.
— Greg Dutilly
Meanwhile she's coldly interrogating me with her eyes. She's definitely in charge of this house and this moment. This must be Chloe.She escorts me to a table full of people and presents me. She introduces them briefly. This one's from Morocco, that one from Italy, he's Persian--I'm not exactly sure what that means--this one's from "the UK." They're all in their twenties, poised and dismissive. They don't know or care who I'm supposed to be at home or where I went to school. They're measuring something else I can't see and don't understand.They nod and turn back to each other. They seem to be waiting for a cue from Chloe to release them from having to feign interest. She introduces herself at substantially more length. Her father is Chinese and her mother is Swiss; she grew up in Hong Kong and "in Europe."I grew up in Michigan and in Michigan. But she didn't ask.
— Kenneth Cain, Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
Besides, what's in a name? Actually, a lot. Whether taken from a parent or grandparent, some saint, or even the late great Elvis, your name insists another person's dream of what you should have been. The portrait of some ancestral ideal lingers through heirloom names. Gender specific names imply all sorts of expectations. More than just a signifier used to summon, instruct, address, accuse, sometimes praise us, our names define and thereby limit us. They put us in a cage.
— Brien Piechos, Burnt Tongues
they saythey only wantflowersto grow frommy mouth,so i willlook themdeadin theeyeas ishovesoft petalspastmy lips,chewwithmy jawcompletelyunhinged,& spitthemdownattheir feet-i will never be your expectations of me
— Amanda Lovelace
Expectations. Strong belief something will happen in the future.Pressure. A motivator. A positive. An indicator you are in the right place.
— Joe Maddon
Always fuck with people's expectations, sunshine. It's good for their circulation.
— Tana French, The Secret Place
Even if the heavy cloud fails to bring heavy rainfall, it cools the atmosphere
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Keep your expectation with God only, not with Human.
— Rashid Jorvee
Never expect anything from anyone, if you wants to live a happy life.
— Rashid Jorvee
Never expect others to be like you, it can be the biggest nightmare!!! Collaboration and synchronization needs to be found in the difference
— Harrish Sairaman
Unless you expect the unexpected, you will not find it, for it is hidden and thickly tangled.
— Heraclitus