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?
The imagination never forgets; it is a re-membering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intellect.
We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.
I'm not a representative of blackness, and I'm not a healer.
No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth
Know that when you seek anything of your own, you will never find God, because you do not seek God purely. You are seeking something along with God, and you are acting just as if you were to make a candle out of God in order to look for something with it. Once one finds the things one is looking for, one throws the candle away. This is what you are doing.
Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side.
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