Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that oppression and freedom are interconnected, suggesting that one group's slavery can result from the subjugation of another.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote highlights the intricate relationship between freedom and slavery, particularly how one form of oppression can lead to another. He argues that the conditions of slavery are not only physical but also tied to social hierarchies, indicating that men's subjugation under tyrannical powers has historically contributed to the oppression of women. The quote prompts reflection on how various forms of oppression relate to and exacerbate each other.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, one might include this quote to emphasize the connection between different forms of oppression.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Tomorrow you may bring about the destruction of your world. Tomorrow you may sing in Paradise above the smoking ruins of your world-cities. But tonight I would like to think of one man, a lone individual, a man without name or country, a man whom I respect because he has absolutely nothing in common with you - MYSELF. Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am.
And though we do have him before our eyes, masked in the Sacred Host, at mass and Benediction and within our lips receive him at communion, yet to hear of him and dwell on the thought of him will do us good.
My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the possibility of love dying.
Whatever we have done with our lives makes us what we are when we die. And everything, absolutely everything, counts.
Imitation is the sincerest flattery.
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