William Lloyd Garrison

“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!”

“I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - and I will be heard!”

“The existing governments of the world are the consequence of disobedience to the commands of God. But Christ came to bring men back to obedience by a new and living way.”

“Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.”

“Surely, nothing can be more dangerous than the doctrine that the moral obligations of men change with the latitude and longitude of a place.”

“Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.”

“That which is not just is not law.”

“Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?”

“I am accused of using hard language. I admit the charge. I have not been able to find a soft word to describe villainy or to identify the perpetrator of it. The man who makes a chattel of his brother - what is he? The man who keeps back the hire of his laborers by fraud - what is he?”

“The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”

“I do not believe that God has created us under this dire necessity to toil, like beasts, to sustain life. I believe it is his will that we should hold absolute mastery over time, so as to devote it mainly to intellectual and moral improvement, domestic enjoyment, and social intercourse.”

“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.”

“Let not those who say that the path of obedience is a dangerous one claim to believe in the living and true God. They deny his omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. It is his will that the bands of wickedness should be loosed, the heavy burdens of tyranny undone, the oppressed set free.”

“Let anti-slavery charity boxes stand uppermost among those for missionary, tract and educational purposes. On this subject, Christians have been asleep; let them shake off their slumbers and arm for the holy contest.”

“Whether permitted to live to witness the abolition of slavery or not, I felt assured that, as I demanded nothing that was not clearly in accordance with justice and humanity, some time or other, if remembered at all, I should stand vindicated in the eyes of my countrymen.”

“The success of any great moral enterprise does not depend upon numbers.”

“We are the friends of reform; but that is not reform, which, in curing one evil, threatens to inflict a thousand others.”

“My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind.”

“If nations perish, it is not because of their devotion to liberty, but for their disregard of its requirements.”

“Prayer is omnipotent: its breath can melt adamantine rocks - its touch can break the stoutest chains.”