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Twelve Years a Slave quotes
12 quotes from Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #45631 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
And what difference is there in the color of the soul?
Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it.
I could not comprehend the justice of that law, or that religion, which upholds or recognizes the principle of Slavery; and never once, I am proud to say, did I fail to counsel any one who came to me, to watch his opportunity, and strike for freedom.
There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones--there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one.
They are deceived who flatter themselves that the ignorant and debased slave has no conception of the magnitude of his wrongs. They are deceived who imagine that he arises from his knees, with back lacerated and bleeding, cherishing only a spirit of meekness and forgiveness.
Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear--dogs, alligators or men!
Credit leads a man into temptation. Cash down is the only thing that will deliver him from evil.
My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell!
Alas! I had not then learned the measure of "man's inhumanity to man," nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain.
It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him.
Blessed be sleep! It visiteth all alike, descending as the dews of heaven on the bond and free.
Ten years I toiled for that man without reward. Ten years of my incessant labor has contributed to increase the bulk of his possessions. Ten years I was compelled to address him with down-cast eyes and uncovered head--in the attitude and language of a slave. I am indebted to him for nothing, save undeserved abuse and stripes.