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Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

America was born in outrageous ambition, so bold as to be improbable. The deprived, the oppressed, the powerless from all over the globe came here with little more than the desire to realize themselves.

In such a condition of affairs, the practical difference between the abolitionist and the sympathizer, to the man who lost his slave and could not recover it, was very nebulous.

You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.

Why hast thou made me born in this country, The inhabitant of which is satisfied with being a slave?

Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries have reached the ears of the Most High. Such are the purity and certainty of his judgments, that he cannot be partial in our favor.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.

Many people on the political left found my work psychologically liberating. They began to say: once you realize that standards emerge historically, then you can see through and discard all the norms to which we have been falsely enslaved.