A Quote by Thomas Pogge

Think of US slavery in 1850, or the subjection of women. Both of these injustices could have been - and were! - defended by pointing out, quite correctly, that this situation of slaves and women had been improving throughout the preceding century. Slaves, in particular, were worked less hard, beaten and raped less frequently, better fed, and less often ripped apart from their families. So would a celebration of moral progress have been appropriate in 1850? Surely not. Slavery could have been and should have been abolished - then, if not before.

Thomas Pogge

Quote Topics

Apart Appropriate Beaten Been Before Better Both Celebration Century Correctly Could Could Have Been Defended Families Fed Frequently Had Hard Improving Less Moral Often Out Particular Pointing Progress Quite Ripped Should Should Have Should Have Been Situation Slavery Subjection Surely Then Think Throughout Us Were Women Worked Would

Quote Author

Thomas Pogge
German - Philosopher
Born: 1953

I can't say with certainty that slavery would have ended more quickly and more completely if the South had been allowed to leave and escaped former slaves had been allowed to remain free, and the North and the rest of the world had been a positive influence on the South. However, it's certainly a possibility that it would have ended sooner if the southern slave owners had agreed to a system of compensated emancipation and freed the slaves without a war and without secession, as most nations that ended slavery did. That absolutely would have been preferable to the Civil War as it happened.

David Swanson

If I had been a different sort of person, maybe less impressionable, less intense, less fearful, less utterly dependent upon the perceptions of others - maybe then I would not have bought the cultural party line that thinness is the be-all and end-all of goals. Maybe if my family had not been in utter chaos most of the time, maybe if my parents were a little better at dealing with their own lives maybe if I'd gotten help sooner, or if I'd gotten different help, maybe if I didn't so fiercely cherish my secret, or if I were not such a good liar, or were not quite so empty inside... maybe.

Marya Hornbacher

For all kinds of reasons, it is more difficult to track women's lives. Women's words have simply been considered less important, so they have been preserved less often.

Adele Logan Alexander

It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that a billion women have been raped or beaten, just the enormity of that. When I was in college, I'd heard that one in four women would be raped, and I thought, God, that means I must know someone who was raped. Sure enough, I found out a week later that a friend had been. A billion is too big because one is too big.

Anne Hathaway

Many Southern Plantation owners were working towards the day when they could convert their investment to more profitable industrial production as had been done in the North, and others felt that freemen who were paid wages would be more efficient than slaves who had no incentive to work. For the present, however, they were stuck with the system they inherited. They felt that a complete and sudden abolition of slavery with no transition period would destroy their economy and leave many of the former slaves to starve - all of which actually happened in due course.

G. Edward Griffin

Women lead in ways different from men's. Men, I think, have been programmed to give orders. Women have been programmed to motivate people, to educate them, to bring out the best in them. Ours is a less authoritarian leadership. I think women tend to play hardball less often. This is the trend of office politics anyway: the days of warring factions are over. We're talking now in terms of cooperation, and I think that is the game women play best.

Muriel Fox

I would have been able to free a thousand more slaves if I could only have convinced them that they were slaves.

Unknown

I'm an Ivy League-educated lawyer, so you'd think the world wouldn't mess with me, right? But I've been paid $10,000 less than a less qualified man in the same role. I've had men I've worked with grab my leg or rub my back in ways that have made me feel uncomfortable. I've been taken off projects because I was pregnant, even though my pregnancies have been both been healthy and didn't impact my work at all.

Jane Park

The six people who had the biggest impact on my life were all women. Had I been sexist, my life would have been far less fulfilling.

Zig Ziglar

For two hundred years Haiti has been swimming upstream. We were the first country in which independence was won by a group of slaves - black slaves. Across the water, the country that had just achieved independence - the U.S. - still practiced slavery.

Michele Montas

Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.

Angela Davis

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is more difficult to research women's lives than it is men's. There has always been a tendency - race notwithstanding - to believe that women's contributions have been less important than men's contributions because women are usually less public people.

Adele Logan Alexander

I know people could tell incredible stories. People have been in concentration camps, or women being raped, or a man going to war and not recovering from it. People have been robbed and beaten. A lot of people have had strong events in their life, which I didn't.

Agnes Varda

Mia and I had been together for more than two years, and yes, it was a high school romance, but it was still the kind of romance where I thought we were trying to find a way to make it forever, the kind that, had we met five years later and had she not been some cello prodigy and had I not been in a band on the rise - or had our lives not been ripped apart by all this -I was pretty sure it would've been.