“Not only was I not born to be a slave: I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave-master. They had, the masters, incontestably, the rope—in time, with enough, they would hang themselves with it. They were not to hang me: I was to see to that.”
James Baldwin
Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work / Other Essays
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Similar quotes
“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau
“Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau
The Social Contract
“Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.”
C. S. Lewis
“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”
Abraham Lincoln
“I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master.”
Nawal El Saadawi