..I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere. I hear my father-in-law's response: 'Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don't tell *me* about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes that they are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's! Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses! You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean! ' Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?. David Mitchell
Some Similar Quotes
  1. You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know. - William Wilberforce

  2. We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience. - Gary L. Francione

  3. Veganism is not a "sacrifice." It is a joy. - Gary L. Francione

  4. If you are not vegan, please consider going vegan. It’s a matter of nonviolence. Being vegan is your statement that you reject violence to other sentient beings, to yourself, and to the environment, on which all sentient beings depend. - Gary L. Francione

  5. Veganism is an act of nonviolent defiance. It is our statement that we reject the notion that animals are things and that we regard sentient nonhumans as moral persons with the fundamental moral right not to be treated as the property or resources of humans. - Gary L. Francione

More Quotes By David Mitchell
  1. A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

  2. We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love.

  3. I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.

  4. Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi...

  5. Travel far enough, you meet yourself.

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