Date: 1787

"Those desires which heretofore were only loose from their slavery in sleep, when he was yet under the laws and his father, when under democratic government, now when he is tyrannized over by his passions, shall be equally as loose when he is awake, and from no horrid slaughter or deed shall he a...

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1787

"The young man comparing the conduct, speeches, and pursuits of his father with those of other men, the one watering the rational part of his soul, and the others the concupiscible and irascible, he delivers up the government within himself to a middle power, that which is irascible and fond of c...

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1787

"When he has thus suffered, and lost his substance, in a terror he pushes headlong from the throne of his soul that ambitious disposition; and, being humbled by his poverty, turns to the making of money, lives sparingly and meanly, and applying to work, scrapes together substance."

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1787

"He then seats in that throne the avaricious disposition, and makes it a mighty king within himself, decked out with Persian crowns, bracelets, and scepters."

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1787

"This man stiles himself a friend to the West-India colonies and their inhabitants, like Demetrius, the silversmith, a man of some considerable abilities, seeing their craft in danger, a craft, however, not so innocent and justifiable as the making of shrines for Diana, though that was base and w...

— Cugoano, Quobna Ottobah (c. 1757-1791)

Date: 1789

"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure."

— Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)

Date: 1789

"In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire [pain and pleasure]: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while"

— Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)

Date: 1789

"Does not slavery itself depress the mind, and extinguish all its fire and every noble sentiment?"

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)

Date: 1789

"Let any man of candour declare, whether the state of servitude and bondage, in which the poor are held both in France and England, does not merit the name of slavery, and justify the assertion of its universal existence at present, as well as the opinion of its having existed from the remotest a...

— Francklyn, Gilbert (fl. 1780-1792)

Date: May 13, 1789

"[T]he Slave Trade has enslaved their [Africans'] minds, blackened their character and sunk them so low in the scale of animal beings, that some think the very apes are of a higher class, and fancy the Ourang Outang has given them the go-by."

— Wilberforce, William (1759-1833)