For no man is a slave who is free in his will.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

55. Nothing in Heaven is enslaved; nothing upon Earth is free.

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

There has never been a slave who did not choose to be a slave,

No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.

On the other hand, the free states carry on their government on the principle of the equality of men. We think slavery is morally wrong, and a direct violation of that principle. We all think it wrong. It is clearly proved, I think, by natural theology, apart from revelation. Every man, black, white or yellow, has a mouth to be fed and two hands with which to feed it, and that bread should be allowed to go to that mouth without controversy.

Men who did not know that they were slaves do not know that they have been freed.

A man without fear cannot be a slave.

If the fundamental principles in the Declaration of Independence, as self-evident truths, are real truths, the existence of slavery, in any form, is a wrong.

I can never acknowledge the right of slavery. I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians — however dignified by the name of the Goddess of Liberty, whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant’s lash, and the cries of his tortured victims.

The Republican principle, the unalterable principle, never to be lost sight of, is that slavery is wrong.

The deliberate, solemn conviction of good men through the world, that slavery is a grievous wrong to human nature, will make itself felt. To increase this moral power is every man's duty. To embody and express this great truth is in every man's power; and thus every man can do something to break the chain of the slave.