Quote#Freedom
The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable. To invade it is to usurp…
Quote byWilliam Lloyd Garrison · 1805–1879
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: "Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Convention," speech in Philadelphia, (6 December 1833).
English (original)
The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable. To invade it is to usurp the prerogative of Jehovah. Every man has a right to his own body—to the products of his own labor—to the protection of law—and to the common advantages of society. It is piracy to buy or steal a native African, and subject him to servitude. Surely, the sin is as great to enslave an American as an African.
— William Lloyd Garrison
More from William Lloyd Garrison
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 …
I accuse her of legalizing, on an enormous scale, licentiousness, fraud, cruelty and murder.
I will say, finally, that I despair of the republic while slavery exists therein.
But the moment he holds them [slaves] as property, however kindly he may treat them, he is a man-stealer, whom the apostle classes among ‘murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers.’
I cherish as strong a love for the land of my nativity as any man living. I am proud of her civil, political and religious institutions — of her high advancement in science, literature and the arts — of her general prosperity and grandeur. …
The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.