Abolitionist

🇺🇸Ralph Waldo Emerson

Literature

Western philosophy

1803–1882

"He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses."

🇺🇸Henry David Thoreau

Literature

Western philosophy

1817–1862

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.."

🇺🇸Susan B. Anthony

Social Activism

1820–1906

"The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall continue to do."

Joseph Priestley

Science

1733–1804

"From the fame opinion of a soul distinct from the body came the practice of praying, first for the dead, and then to them with a long train of other absurd opinions, and superstitious practices."

🇳🇬Thomas Babington Macaulay

Politics

1826–1878

"We are free, we are civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation."

Granville Sharp

Law

1735–1813

"Why is it that the poor sooty African meets with so different a measure of justice in England and America, as to be adjudged free in the one, and in the other held in the most abject Slavery?"

Charles James Fox

Politics

1749–1806

"Religion was best understood when least talked of."

🇬🇧Richard Watson

Religion

1781–1833

"Faith is the vital artery of the soul. When we begin to believe, we begin to love. Faith grafts the soul into Christ, as the scion into the stock, and fetches all its nutriment from the blessed Vine."

Harriet Martineau

Literature

1802–1876

"If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power."

🇺🇸Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Literature

feminism

1815–1902

"In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object."

🇺🇸Harriet Tubman

Social Activism

1822–1913

"I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."

🇺🇸Owen Lovejoy

Politics

1811–1864

"The doors will be forever barred and bolted against those miserable Democrats who scoff the rights of man."

🇺🇸Maria Weston Chapman

Literature

1806–1885

"If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere."

🇬🇧Ottobah Cugoano

Social Activism

1757–1791

"Slavery is an evil of the first magnitude, ... and contrary to all the genuine principles of Christianity, and yet carried on by men denominated thereby."

🇺🇸Margaret Fuller

Journalism

Transcendentalism

1810–1850

"To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it, seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph, mere stops."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Literature

1806–1861

"Love me sweet With all thou art Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the Lightest part, Love me in full Being."

🇬🇧Erasmus Darwin

Philosophy

Enlightenment

1731–1802

"a feather-bed to catch a falling Christian."

Ignatius Sancho

Music

1729–1780

"samples of Sancho's music played by Paul Freeman"

🇺🇸Martin Delany

Literature

1812–1885

"Politicians, religionists, colonizationists, and abolitionists, have each and all, at different times, presumed to think for, dictate to, and know better what suited colored people, than they knew for themselves"

🇺🇸Harriet Beecher Stowe

Literature

1811–1896

"True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love's sake have in them a poetry that is immortal."

🇺🇸Nat Turner

Religion

1800–1831

"And my father and mother strengthened me in this my first impression, saying in my presence, I was intended for some great purpose, which they had always thought from certain marks on my head and breast."

🇺🇸William Lloyd Garrison

Journalism

abolitionism

1805–1879

"The success of any great moral enterprise does not depend upon numbers."

William Wilberforce

Politics

1784–1812

"Having heard all of this you may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know."

🇺🇸Albert Barnes

Science

1798–1870

"Such was God's original love for man, that He was willing to stoop to any sacrifice to save him; and the gift of a Saviour was the mere expression of that love."

🇺🇸Sojourner Truth

Social Activism

1797–1883

"Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828"