All Quotes by William Lloyd Garrison
“With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.”
“Every Fourth of July, our Declaration of Independence is produced, with a sublime indignation, to set forth the tyranny of the mother country and to challenge the admiration of the world. But what a pitiful detail of grievances does this document present in comparison with the wrongs which our slaves endure!”
“That which is not just is not law.”
“We may be personally defeated, but our principles never!”
“Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.”
“The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”
“What shall be said, then, of those who insist upon ignoring the question of slavery as not involved in this deadly feud, and maintain that the only issue is, the support of the government and the preservation of the Union? Surely, they are "fools and blind"; for it is slaveholders alone who have conspired to seize the one, and overturn the other. As long as the enslavement of a single human being is sanctioned in the land, the curse of God will rest upon it.”
“Our country is the world — our countrymen are all mankind.”
“Let Southern oppressors tremble — let their secret abettors tremble — let their Northern apologists tremble — let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.”
“Unhappily, to borrow the words of Ganganelli, a large majority of mankind are "mere abortions": calling themselves rational and intelligent beings, they act as if they had neither brains nor conscience, and as if there were no God, no accountability, no heaven, no hell, no eternity.”
“With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.”
“Since the creation of the world there has been no tyrant like Intemperance, and no slaves so cruelly treated as his.”
“We may be personally defeated, but our principles never.”
“The Sabbath, as now recognized and enforced, is one of the main pillars of Priestcraft and Superstition, and the stronghold of a merely ceremonial Religion.”
“Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.”
“The success of any great moral enterprise does not depend upon numbers.”
“You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.”
“Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.”