This is the way human beings contrive to feed their self-destructive vices: trying not to see them, trying not to acknowledge them, delaying the important decisions and pretending that nothing will happen.

We count ourselves among conquerors; we think about the necessity for new orders, also for a new slavery - for every strengthening and enhancement of the human type also involves a new kind of enslavement.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

All preachers of morality, as also all theologians have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary.

Well, then, had I been at Martinique, I should also have been on the side of the English, because above all things it is necessary to save one's life. I am for the whites, because I am white; I have no other reason, yet that is reason good enough. How was it possible to grant liberty to the Africans, to men without any kind of civilization, who did not even know what a colony meant, or that there was such a place as France?

I think that if anything can be proved by natural theology, it is that slavery is morally wrong.