William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrisonwas a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which he founded with Isaac Knapp in 1831 and published in Massachusetts until slavery was abolished by Constitutional amendment after the American Civil War. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United States. In the 1870s, Garrison became a prominent voice for the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth12 December 1805
CountryUnited States of America
Since the creation of the world there has been no tyrant like Intemperance, and no slaves so cruelly treated as his.
Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen - but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.
I have a need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.
Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage.
Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring in your efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. Come what may - cost what it may - inscribe on the banner which you unfurl to the breeze, as your religious and political motto - "NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY! NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS
Liberty for each, for all, and forever!
Everyone should be treated fairly no matter what they look like.
There must be no compromise with slavery - none whatever. Nothing is gained, everything is lost, by subordinating principle to expedience.
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.
Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.
I will be as harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice... I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.
No man shall rule over me with my consent. I will rule over no man.
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.
Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.