The sky is dark. But to understand something is to give light. Those who deny liberty to the slaves may have white skins, but their consciences are blacker than the skin of the Negro.

Am I not a man and brother?

Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave?

Oppressed people are frequently very oppressive when first liberated. They know but two positions: somebody's foot on their neck or their foot on somebody's neck.

Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.

Today the large organization is lord and master, and most of its employees have been desensitized much as were the medieval peasants who never knew they were serfs.

Man alone can enslave man.

It isn't those who are taken by force, put in chains, and sold as slaves who are the real slaves; it is those who will accept it, morally and physically.

Raphael painted, Luther preached, Corneille wrote, and Milton sang; and through it all, for four hundred years, the dark captives wound to the sea amid the bleaching bones of the dead: for four hundred years the sharks followed the scurrying ships; for four hundred years America was strewn with the living and dying millions of a transplanted race; for four hundred years Ethiopia stretched forth her hands unto God.

The sunlight that has brought life and healing to you has brought [slave] stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.

We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written.

Am I African? What would my feelings be when I looked into the black face of the African, feeling that maybe his great-great-great-grandfather had sold my great-great-great-grandfather into slavery?

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. He frees himself and shows the way to others. Freedom and slavery are mental states.

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea ...

We do not give [slaves] what is more important than food or clothing or kindness. We do not give them freedom.

Death is a slave's freedom.

Slavery has as many shapes among us as there are things we need.

Slavery is the offspring of darkness.

A nation may lose its liberties and be a century in finding it out. Where is the American liberty? ... In its far-reaching and broad sweep, slavery has stricken down the freedom of us all.

I want to die a slave to principles, not to men.