Patrick Henry Quotes

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

Now I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil.

This is not a question of expediency, but of right. In antebellum days the proposition was not, “Are the blacks good enough to be free?” but, “Have they the right?” So today the question is not, “Will outrages result from freeing humanity?” but, “Has it the right to life, the means of life, the opportunities of happiness?”

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

The resources, advantages, and powers of the American people are very great, and they have, consequently, succeeded to equally great responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them to test whether a government, established on the principles of human freedom, can be maintained against an effort to build one upon the exclusive foundation of human bondage.

Not the Christian religion only, but nature herself, cries out against the state of slavery.

It is hard for the old slave holding spirit to die. But die it must.

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

Witness, eternal God! Oh, witness that, from this hour, I will do what one man can to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!

Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a "sacred right of self-government." These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other.

The artist must elect to fight for Freedom or for Slavery.

It seems almost incredible that the advocates of liberty should conceive of the idea of selling a fellow creature to slavery.

Should I be worried about being a slave and being returned to slavery? Because certain things happened in the Constitution that had to change.

Death is a slave's freedom.

In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two

I could not comprehend the justice of that law, or that religion, which upholds or recognizes the principle of slavery.

Liberty is life; slavery is death.

Slavery is slavery. The chain of gold is quite as bad as the chain of iron. Is there a way out?

I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

By their complying with your request to leave they [the LDS members in Clay County] are surrendering some of the dearest rights guaranteed in the Constitution of our country; and that human nature can be driven to a certain extent when it will yield no further.

There is no freedom on earth or in any star for those who deny freedom to others.

I am the dream and the hope of the slave

Civil Rights Program is a farce and a sham – an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty.