Welcome to our collection of quotes by William Lloyd Garrison. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison (December 10, 1805 – May 24, 1879) was a prominent American Christian, abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely-read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, which he founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was abolished by Constitutional amendment in 1865. Garrison promoted "no-governmentism" and rejected the inherent validity of the American government on the basis that its engagement in war, imperialism, and slavery made the government corrupt and tyrannical; he initially opposed violence as a principle and advocated for Christian nonresistance against evil -- though at the outbreak of the civil war, he abandoned his previous principles and embraced the armed struggle and the Lincoln administration. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and promoted immediate and uncompensated, as opposed to gradual and compensated, emancipation of slaves in the United States.
The source of Garrison's power was the Bible. From his earliest days, he read the Bible constantly and prayed constantly. It was with this fire that he started his conflagration. ...
So also, a prejudice against all fixed forms of worship, against the authority of human government, against every binding of the spirit into conformity with human law, — all these things grew up in Garrison's mind out of his Bible reading.: 164, 166
Garrison was a typesetter and could run a printing shop; he wrote his editorials in The Liberator while setting them in type, without writing them out first on paper.: 57 This helped assure the viability of The Liberator, and also that it contained exactly what Garrison wanted, as he did not have to deal with any outsiders to produce his paper, except his partner Isaac Knapp. Like the other major abolitionist printer-publisher, the martyred Elijah Lovejoy, a price was on his head; he was burned in effigy and a gallows was erected in front of his Boston office. While he was relatively safe in Boston, at one point he had to be smuggled onto a ship to escape to England, where he remained for a year.
From the day Garrison established the Liberator he was the strongest man in America. He was affected in his thought by no one. What he was thinking, all men were destined to think. ...
His power of arousing uncontrollable disgust was a gift, like magic; and he seems to sail upon it as a demon upon the wind. Not Andrew Jackson, nor John Quincy Adams, nor Webster, nor Clay, nor Benton, nor Calhoun, who dance like shadows about his machine, but William Lloyd Garrison becomes the central figure in American life. ...
He vitalized and permanently changed this nation as much as one man ever did the same for any nation in the history of the world.: 6–8
Garrison also emerged as a leading advocate of women's rights, which prompted a split in the abolitionist community. In the 1870s, Garrison became a prominent voice for the women's suffrage movement.
The existing governments of the world are the consequence of disobedience to the commands of God. But Christ came to bring men back to obedience by a new and living way.
Slavery will not be overthrown without excitement, a most tremendous excitement.
And now let me give the sentiment which has been, and ever will be, the governing passion of my soul: 'Liberty for each, for all, and forever!'
In proportion as we perceive and embrace the truth do we become just, heroic, magnanimous, divine.
Has not the experience of two centuries shown that gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice? Is there an instance, in the history of the world, where slaves have been educated for freedom by their task-masters?
Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.
Since the creation of the world there has been no tyrant like Intemperance, and no slaves so cruelly treated as his.
There must be no compromise with slavery -- none whatever. Nothing is gained, everything is lost, by subordinating principle to expedience.
The Sabbath, as now recognized and enforced, is one of the main pillars of Priestcraft and Superstition, and the stronghold of a merely ceremonial Religion.
In firing his gun, John Brown has merely told what time of day it is. It is high noon.
Surely, nothing can be more dangerous than the doctrine that the moral obligations of men change with the latitude and longitude of a place.
If all our agents would abridge their speeches one half, I am satisfied the effect produced would be much greater. The 'art of leaving off' at the right time, and in the right place, is one of the most difficult things to learn.
Prayer is omnipotent: its breath can melt adamantine rocks -- its touch can break the stoutest chains.
Let Southern oppressors tremble-let their secret abettors tremble-let their Northern apologists tremble-let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.
If nations perish, it is not because of their devotion to liberty, but for their disregard of its requirements.
Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage.
Let anti-slavery charity boxes stand uppermost among those for missionary, tract and educational purposes. On this subject, Christians have been asleep; let them shake off their slumbers and arm for the holy contest.
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity?
I have a need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.
Our country is the world-our countrymen are all mankind.
I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.
Our country is the world -- our countrymen are all mankind.
The success of any great moral enterprise does not depend upon numbers.
We are the friends of reform; but that is not reform, which, in curing one evil, threatens to inflict a thousand others.
The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.
That which is not just is not law.
Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.
With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?
You can not possibly have a broader basis for government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.
The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.
My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind.
We may be personally defeated, but our principles never!
I will be as harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice... I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.
Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.
I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- and I will be heard!