Meditation on the holy Scriptures , free us from mental slavery.

Jeb'd said it was harder for a pretty girl to find work; even white men liked flowers, whether red or pink or blue.

It might seem to you that living in the woods on a riverbank would remove you from the modern world. But not if the river is navigable, as ours is. On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for - or maybe even see - an old man in a rowboat raising his lines...I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom.

My creed on the subject of slavery is short. Slavery per se is not sin. It is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Divine Wisdom.

Its hardness and solidity had been an odd kind of comfort. Do not wish for anything. Be and endure. The Old African had learned that enduring was power too, and just as he had been drawn to the boulder, so the slaves, after a while, were drawn to him.

Democracy is probably the only discovery by mankind which mostly brought it only happiness.

Life humbles the rich by giving them problems that money can’t resolve, or, dissolve. Life enslaves the poor by giving them problems that money can resolve, or, dissolve.

A lot of things that we cannot buy and sell in markets used to be totally legal objects of market exchange - human beings when we had slavery, child labour, human organs, and so on. So there is no economic theory that actually says that you shouldn't have slavery or child labour because all these are political, ethical judgments.

They put me and more 300 companions of misfortune and captivity in the strait and infected basement of a ship. Thirty days of cruel torments and utter lack of what is needed most to life we spent in this grave until we address the Brazilian beaches. To fit the human merchandise in the basement, were tied up and, for there was no fear of revolt, chained like beasts of our forests, which lead to potentates of Europe playground.

A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well.