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In every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom;
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“In every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom;”

Phillis Wheatley

Source
Letter to the Reverend Samson Occom
Date
1774
Meaning

Meaning of “In every human Breast, God has implanted a…”

Wheatley argues from shared human nature that love of liberty is not limited by race, directly challenging the contradiction between professed freedom and slavery.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Letter to the Reverend Samson Occom, February 11, 1774, published in the Connecticut press and represented by the National Constitution Center. Wheatley’s explicitly religious and natural-rights argument condemns oppression while speaking from the historical context of Atlantic slavery.

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EqualityShortThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionDignityGodPoliticsReligionRights
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Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
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“Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.”

Phillis Wheatley · On Being Brought from Africa to America · 1773
Meaning & context

Wheatley turns Christian doctrine back toward readers who demean Black people, insisting within the poem’s religious framework that racial contempt is incompatible with shared spiritual possibility.

Source details

“On Being Brought from Africa to America,” in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), represented by Project Gutenberg #409. The poem’s eighteenth-century racial and Christian vocabulary is preserved in historical context; interpretation remains attentive to Wheatley’s position as an enslaved Black poet writing for a colonial audience.

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If all Men are born Free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves?
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“If all Men are born Free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves?”

Mary Astell · Some Reflections Upon Marriage · 1706
Meaning & context

Astell turns the language of natural freedom back on a social order that treats women as naturally subordinate, exposing a contradiction between political liberty and domestic domination.

Source details

Some Reflections Upon Marriage, Appendix in the fourth-edition text represented by Project Gutenberg #61143. The edition states that the preceding edition’s extended Preface was moved to the end as an Appendix; there Astell asks, “If all Men are born Free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves?” while challenging claims of natural male supremacy. It is early-modern feminist political-religious polemic, not a literal equation of every form of historical slavery.

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All the negro asks is justice—a fair and impartial trial in the courts of the country.
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“All the negro asks is justice—a fair and impartial trial in the courts of the country.”

Ida B. Wells · Lynch Law in America · 1900
Meaning & context

Wells rejects mob punishment and insists on equal access to lawful trial and ordinary judicial safeguards.

Source details

“Lynch Law in America,” Chicago, January 1900, represented by Lit2Go’s historical speech transcription. The quotation preserves Wells’s period racial terminology because it is part of the primary text; its purpose is an anti-lynching demand for due process, not endorsement of historical vocabulary.

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The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man;
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“The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man;”

James Madison · Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, 20 June 1785 · 1785
Meaning & context

Madison argues that religious belief and practice should follow individual conviction rather than civil compulsion.

Source details

Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, represented by Founders Online / National Archives. Madison wrote against a proposed Virginia assessment supporting teachers of Christianity. The sentence is historical religious-liberty argument, not current legal advice.

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We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.
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“We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.”

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper · We Are All Bound Up Together · 1866
Meaning & context

Harper argues that injustice against a vulnerable group damages the moral and civic life of the whole society rather than remaining isolated to its immediate victims.

Source details

Speech to the National Woman’s Rights Convention, New York, May 1866, represented by the National Constitution Center historical document. Harper links racial injustice, women’s inequality, civil liberty and shared social responsibility in a Reconstruction-era argument for universal rights.

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This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.
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“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.”

Frederick Douglass · What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? · 1852
Meaning & context

Douglass exposes the exclusion within a national celebration of liberty when enslaved people are denied the freedom and rights being publicly commemorated.

Source details

Frederick Douglass, Oration delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, July 5, 1852, reviewed against the public-domain Wikisource transcription of the original oration. 'This Fourth July is yours, not mine' follows Douglass's contrast between the audience's national independence and the exclusion of enslaved Black Americans; it remains abolitionist indictment, not generic patriotism.