Slave Ship Quotes

And so, whether they came here on the Mayflower, on a slave ship, or on an airplane from Havana, we are all descendants of the men and women who built here the nation that saved the world. ~ Marco Rubio

Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed heathen are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

they ask for water we give them sea
they ask for bread we give them sea
they ask for life we give them only the sea ~ M. NourbeSe Philip

Don't feel too bad. Everyone's in chains here. Eriophora's a slave ship. We cavemen are shackled by our need for air and food and water, by the disorienting discontinuity of lives cut into slices spread centuries apart. The Chimp is shackled by its own stupidity, And you, well... ~ Peter Watts

The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon connected with terror, when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled, and tossed up to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. ~ Olaudah Equiano

The Bible says that man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. Well, trouble followed me like sharks trailing a slave ship. Even when I tried to get away it was there swirling in a vortex around me. ~ Adrian McKinty

In his fierce, bold determination to see the lives of modern-day slaves up close, Benjamin Skinner reminds me of the British abolitionist of two hundred years ago, Zachary Macaulay, who once traveled on a slave ship across the Atlantic, taking notes. Skinner goes everywhere, from border crossings to brothels to bargaining sessions with dealers in human beings, to bring us this vivid, searing account of the wide network of human trafficking and servitude which spans today's globe. ~ Adam Hochschild

The author of the hymn 'Amazing Grace', John Newton, who once was a slave ship captain, and who became a Christian preacher and an enemy of the slave trade, once said: 'I have reason to praise [God] for my trials, for, most probably, I should have been ruined without them.' The author of The Gulag Archipelago , Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who suffered for twenty years in the hellish prison camps he describes in that book, wrote: 'Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.' This does not mean that Newton would have chosen to go through his trials, or that Solzhenitsyn in any way enjoyed the terrible suffering of his imprisonment. But it means that in retrospect they can see that God used those difficulties to bless them in the long run. ~ Eric Metaxas

You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to ... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa. ~ Henry Louis Gates

The mere toleration of the slave trade could not make slavery itself - the right of property in man - lawful any where; not even on board the slave ship. Toleration of a wrong is not law. ~ Lysander Spooner

The Supreme Court said nothing about silliness, but I suspect it may play more of a role than one might suppose. People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust ... Probably the first slave ship, with Negroes lying in chains on its decks, seemed commonsensical to the owners who operated it and to the planters who patronized it. But such a vessel would not be in the realm of common sense today. The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change. ~ E.B. White

At least we have each other. He held out his arms, like he would have given her a huge hug if they hadn't been strapped into their seats. The nose of the ship tipped to the right and he quickly grasped the controls again, leveling it out just in time to dodge flock of pigeons. ~ Marissa Meyer

And it is a very great fault amongst a very great part of Christians, that in their enquiries of religion, even the best of them ordinarily ask but these two questions, "Is it lawful? Is it necessary?" If they find it lawful, they will do it without scruple or restraint; and then they suffer imperfection, or receive the reward of folly: for it may be lawful, and yet not fit to be done; it may be it is not expedient; and he that will do all that he can do lawfully, would, if he durst, do something that is not lawful. And as great an error is on the other hand in the other question. He that too strictly enquires of an action whether it be necessary or no, would do well to ask also whether it be good? whether it be of advantage to the interest of his soul? For if a christian man or woman; that is, a redeemed, blessed, obliged person, a great beneficiary, endeared to God beyond all the comprehensions of a man's imagination, one that is less than the least of all God's mercies, and yet hath received many great ones and hopes for more, if he should do nothing but what is necessary, that is, nothing but what he is compelled to; then he hath the obligations of a son, and the affections of a slave, which is the greatest undecency of the world in the accounts of christianity. If a Christian will do no more than what is necessary, he will quickly be tempted to omit something of that also. . . .

He that will do every thing that is lawful, and nothing but what is necessary, wil ~ Jeremy Taylor

I am thankful that I can be thankful, for if thankfulness did not exist my heart would be irretrievably imprisoned by the crazed twins of acquisition and possession, and my soul would exist as a forever slave to greed. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Friends are necessary to a happy life. When friendship deserts us, we are as helpless as a ship left by the tide high upon the shore. When friendship returns to us, it's as though the tide came back, giving us buoyancy and freedom. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying
a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour. ~ Edward Abbey

What the hell was that supposed to mean anyway? I'm yours. My what? My slave, my guardian angel, my own personal pain in the ass? ~ Amanda Bonilla

Where yet my boys are, and that fatal She,
Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
Destruction for a dowry - this to see
And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:
I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,
They made an Exile - not a Slave of me. ~ George Gordon Byron

When you go into labor you see that you are not the captain of the ship. You are the ship. There is no captain. There are only the waves. ~ Karen Maezen Miller

A democracy flirts with the danger of becoming a slave in direct ratio to the numbers of its citizens who work, but do not own / or who own, but do not work; or who distribute, as politicians do, but do not produce. The danger of the "slave state" disappears in ratio to the numbers of people who own property and admit its attendant responsibilities under God. They can call their souls their own because they own and administer something other than their souls. Thus they are free. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Verbal virtuosities or the gratuitous expense of time or money that is presupposed by material or symbolic appropriation of works of art, or even, at the second power, the self-imposed constraints and restrictions which make up the "asceticism of the privileged" (as Marx said of Seneca) and the refusal of the facile which is the basis of all "pure" aesthetics, are so many repetition of that variant of the master-slave dialectic through which the possessors affirm their possession of their possessions. In so doing, they distance themselves still further from the dispossessed, who, not content with being slaves to necessity in all its forms, are suspected of being possessed by the desire for possession, and so potentially possessed by the possessions they do not, or do not yet, possess. ~ Pierre Bourdieu

The storm drowns the ship,
but it does not drown the fish. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

My 30 year attempt (and subsequent failure) to reach "normal" has brought me to ponder whether "normal" even exists, or if it is nothing more than delusional grandeur based in the sounds of those sweet sirens drawing my ship in all the wrong directions. ~ Dan Pearce

We must show new energy in fighting back an old evil. Nearly two centuries after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and more than a century after slavery was officially ended in its last strongholds, the trade in human beings for any purpose must not be allowed to thrive in our time. ~ George W. Bush

And in those changes to the Scriptures of your faith you only prove that you didn't know what you were doing in the first place. Picking and choosing your faith promises the ultimate freedom to be who you want and do what you want, but eventually it will only prove to you that to live for yourself and to make your law based on your own happiness is to become the slave of your imperfect self and to be tortured and tormented by your own pride and failure. ~ Hayley DiMarco

Guiding the ship takes more the your skill. It is the compass inside as the strength of your will. ~ Dar Williams

I want to take their money and let them build their ship and get off my land. That's all I want."
"Good to know," said a voice above her head.
Elliot and Dee looked up, and there, shadowed against the light from the swinging sun-lamps, stood Kai. ~ Diana Peterfreund

Your ship was spotted off the coast this morning, slipping silently through the fog ... coming around the cape she appeared in a shaft of sunlight ... and what a sight to see! Glimmering as much as the ocean herself. Massive and beautiful beyond belief! Laden with treasures, happy times, friends, love, and laughter. Quick, you must PREPARE for her docking ... you MUST make space in your life for her gifts ... otherwise, just as quickly, she'll quietly slip back out to sea. ~ Mike Dooley

There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves. ~ Jose Rizal

A man without fear cannot be a slave. ~ Edith Hamilton

If your body, if your mind, if your emotions, if your energies are not functioning the way you want them to, then this is the worst kind of slavery, because somebody else decides what should happen within you. If somebody else decides what should happen around you, that itself you call as slavery. But if someone decides what should happen within you, is it not a more horrible way of being a slave? But please see, the whole world is in this slavery. The only consolation is everybody is like this. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship. ~ Omar Nelson Bradley

When the ship approached the equator, I stopped going out on deck in the daytime. The sun burned like a flame. The days had shortened and night came swiftly. One moment it was light, the next it was dark. The sun did not set but fell into the water like a meteor. Late in the evening, when I went out briefly, a hot wind slapped my face. From the ocean came a roar of passions that seemed to have broken through all barriers:'We mus procreate and multiply! We must exhaust all the powers of lust!' The waves glowed like lava, and I imagined I could see multitudes of living beings - algae, whales, sea monsters - reveling in an orgy, from the surface to the bottom of the sea. Immortality was the law here. The whole planet raged with animation. At times, I heard my name in the clamor: the spirit of the abyss calling me to join them in their nocturnal dance. ("Hanka") ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

When we go to tell our stories, people think we want it to have gone different. People want to say things like "sore losers" and "move on already," "quit playing the blame game." But is it a game? Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they're winning when they say "Get over it." This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that's how you know you're on board the ship that serves hors d'oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who've never even heard of the words hors d'oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, "It's too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings." And then someone else on board says something like, "But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d'oeuvres." At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who'd been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the fat ~ Tommy Orange

The man who is too isolated grows timid, abstracted, a little odd: He stumbles along amid realities like a sailor who has just come off his ship; he has lost the sense of the human lot; he seems to look on you as if you were a "proposition" to be inserted in a syllogism, or an example to be put down in a notebook. ~ Antonin Sertillanges

That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows.
At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar."
"Titanic City" was born.

It's the song, they said.
No, the sea. The luxury. The ship.
It's the sex, they whispered.
Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo.
"Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Beyond today tomorrow reigns for yesterday has passed. Earth time is just a fleeting ploy, our spinning planet's ship ahoy; Our pale blue dot on brink of vast. ~ EsthersChild

There was a man here, lashed himself to a spar as his ship went down, and for seven days and seven nights he was on the sea, and what kept him alive while others drowned was telling himself stories like a madman, so that as one ended another began. On the seventh day he had told all the stories he knew and that was when he began to tell himself as if he were a story, from the earliest beginnings to his green and deep misfortune. The story he told was of a man lost and found, not once, but many times, as he choked his way out of the waves. And the night fell, he saw the Cape Wrath light, only lit a week it was, but it was, and he knew that if he became the story of the light, he might be saved. With his last strength he began to paddle towards it, arms on either side of the spar, and in his mind the light became a shining rope, pulling him in. He took hold of it, tied it round his waist, and at that moment, the keeper saw him, and ran for the rescue boat. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Imitation causes us to leave natural ways to enter into artificial ones; it therefore makes slaves. ~ Alexandre Vinet

Are you mine?" I asked, low knowing the answer already.
"Completely." His voice thrummed with conviction.
And oh, I liked it.
"So I may do anything I wish with you?"
"Anything."
I didn't need his invitation, of course. He belonged to me, like everything in Sheol, but there was more pleasure in a willing slave. I drew my athame and took his hand. He shuddered at my touch because I put a thread of power in it, pulled it through him in a flicker of the darkest pleasure. Soon enough he'd beg for this, unable to perform with anyone else. I knew how to enthrall my lovers. With a faint smile, I pricked the tip of his finger. Not as much pain as he expected, I think, but I drew blood. His gasp aroused me. His blood welled like a crimson jewel and I took his fingertip between my lips, tasting him. Learning his secrets. ~ Ann Aguirre

The greed manifests us in many shapes,
The high rise building,
a big house ,
deforestation,
no land to grow and
no land to feed our own,
Our very own People !

The money was deadly than any plague,
People bought and sold people
like a commodity !
and then ,
They divided us ,
according to our flawed faith.....
The stench of ignorance fills the air,
nestling at the base of our cortex .

I refuse to be conquered !

The agenda was all clear from the start,
Prospect of the land;
they would rather see us disappear,
Sold for seventy five lac a 100 years back,
It's seventy five million wounds and every day to cry !!

We are a " numb nation "
We are a " slave nation "
&
I refuse to be conquered !!! ~ BinYamin Gulzar

If all men are born free, why is it that all women are born slaves? ~ Mary Astell

It doesn't take a genius to pump up the GNP [of a developing country] by burning down rainforests, using slave labor and social repression to keep things in place. ~ Hazel Henderson