Enslavement Quotes

“Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities

“Until you realize how easy it is for your mind to be manipulated, you remain the puppet of someone else's game.”
― Evita Ochel

“Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

“Laziness can be a value on its own for those who want to show supremacy through contempt for work and wish to be free individuals by fighting the enslavement to labor. While they don’t want to become dependent on ‘wage slavery’ and their livelihood only hinges on salaries, they feel confined to a social stratification, causing a collective stigma that results in poverty and underfeeding. (The daily job)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“In our relationships with others, we need to remain free, without becoming what they want us to be, despite ourselves, with no enslavement to their expectations. The alienation from ourselves can never be an option in the garden of our mental health. ("Steaming ahead")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Intensity-seeking is an enslavement of our own perpetuation. When we step out of the delirium of always seeking someone new, and meet the same old sad and lonely child within, our healing journey begins. Exhausting ourselves with novelty is a defense against our deepest pain, one that we cannot outrun. But once we stop and feel our losses, we can begin our healing journey and be the authentic, joyous person we were born to be.”
― Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence

“Perhaps, there is no such person who can be called truly free, but only those who can be deemed so by comparison.”
― Ashim Shanker, Sinew of the Social Species

“We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“This is sacred space.
Libation . . . instead of pouring water on the ground, I pour words on the page.
I begin with this libation in honor of all of those unknown and known spirits who surround us. I acknowledge the origins of this land where I am seated while writing this introduction. This land was inhabited by Indigenous people, the very first people to inhabit this land, who lived here for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived and were unfortunately unable to cohabitate without dominating, enslaving, raping, terrorizing, stealing from, relocating, and murder- ing the millions of members of Indigenous nations throughout Turtle Island, which is now known as North America. I write libation to those millions of Indigenous women, men, and children; and those millions of kidnapped and enslaved African women, men, and children whose genocide, confiscated land, centuries of free labor, forced migration, traumatic memories of rape, and sweat, tears, and blood make up the very fiber and foundation of all of the Americas and the Caribbean.”
― Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Love WITH Accountability: Digging up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse

“The caged animal despairs.”
― Marty Rubin

“I resist the urge to claim some of the pretty purple flowers for myself, though Gaewha tries the scissors and then clutches some flowers in her hand, tightly, fiercely. We have never been allowed possessions of our own. [...] Gaewha huddles in a corner with the scissors, ready to defend her flowers to the death.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“But if you happen to be a man some time in the future, and you've made it this far, please remember: you will never be subjected to the temptation of feeling you must forgive a man as a woman. It's difficult to resist, believe me. But remember that forgiveness, too, is a power; to beg for it is a power, and to withhold it or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom, and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Enslavement to God signifies liberation from all other forms of servitude, and although modern man may think that he is liberated, he is in fact a slave to his desires... He is ‘addicted’ to hoarding wealth, sex, violence, intoxicants and so on. But above all, he is often seduced by the capitalist system that tends to work through the invention of false needs, which he feels must be satisfied instantly.”
― Donald W. Flood, The Best Way to Live and Die

“The institution of slavery was, for a quarter millennium, the conversion of human beings into currency, into machines who existed solely for the profit of their owners, to be worked as long as the owners desired, who had no rights over their bodies or loved ones, who could be mortgaged, bred, won in a bet, given as wedding presents, bequeathed to heirs, sold away from spouses or children to cover an owner’s debt or to spite a rival or to settle an estate. They were regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people who owned them. Some were castrated or endured other tortures too grisly for these pages, tortures that the Geneva Conventions would have banned as war crimes had the conventions applied to people of African descent on this soil. Before there was a United States of America, there was enslavement. Theirs was a living death passed down for twelve generations.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“Love, Don Jaime, love," he went on after a moment of sad reflection. "That is the only thing that can make us happy and, paradoxically, it is also the thing that condemns us to our worst torments. To love is to be enslaved.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Fencing Master

“It is in refusing to recognize that we worship something that we move from the worship ‘of’ that thing to slavery ‘to’ that thing.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“As you will soon see, finding freedom is only the first part. Living free is a whole other.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The experience of slavery is the bedrock on which Caribbean society has been founded.”
― Sharon Hurley Hall, Exploring Shadeism

“Do not fetter yourself to a small thing and you will not be enslaved to a greater one. For the greater evil is built up only on the basis of the smaller.”
― Ilias the Presbyter

“May we all stand tall together in the face of those forces, here and elsewhere, that seek to enslave us.”
― Sol Luckman, Cali the Destroyer

“Interventionism inevitably leads to socialism, central banking inevitably leads to hyperinflation, total cashlessness inevitably leads to total surveillance, and "guaranteed income" inevitably leads to guaranteed enslavement. A deadly poison remains a deadly poison even when ingested in a gradual manner.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“Look to the Kingdom of Heaven and all its righteousness and all things shall be added unto you. What is righteousness but character, morals and value! Enter the Kingdom and what affect then does the world hold? And all things shall be added unto you so you can walk through lifes valley of death like a lion who's courageous and bold.
Will you take heed to the knowledge given that will fulfill your every earthly need? Or would you rather be enslaved in your chains, forever dealing with lifes anguish and never-ending pains? Free-will is a choice between yes and no, right or wrong? It's a choice that makes you weak or a choice that makes you strong.”
― Jose R. Coronado, The Land Flowing With Milk And Honey

“Anybody who thinks that shadeism does not exist is not being honest.”
― Sharon Hurley Hall

“Evil leads to enslavement.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Cruelty enslaves, Charity frees.”
― Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu

“Take care of your heart and your mind for they are like a garden.
And nothing good thrives in a garden full of weeds.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“When the fear of death goes... Bondage goes.”
― Bert McCoy

“All corners else o' th' earth Let liberty make use of- space enough Have I in such a prison.”
― Shakespeare's Globe, The Tempest

“Haiku

We sacrifice health
enslaving ourselves, working
to pay off our debt.”
― Sanjo Jendayi

“HOPE can ENSLAVE people much more than CHAINS.”
― PK. Kasirim