Top 83 Northup's Quotes
#1. For sheer drama, few accounts of slavery match Solomon Northup's tale of abduction from freedom and forcible enslavement.
Ira Berlin
#2. one knee, with a groan, I released my hold upon his throat,
Solomon Northup
#3. Unsoundness in a slave, as well as in a horse, detracts materially from his value. If no warranty is given, a close examination is a matter of particular importance to the Negro jockey.
Solomon Northup
#4. I wouldn't let the old voices dictate me; I wouldn't let anyone dictate who I was anymore. I was strong enough to know who I was and I wasn't going to be beaten down again.
J.M. Northup
#5. My step-dad's rendition of events was uncontested even by me and therefore, it became our truth. Truth I'd never be able to prove or change; truth that protected him from suspicion and penalty. Truth that I now knew was a lie.
J.M. Northup
#6. Solomon Northup is one of the most remarkable people I've ever encountered in my life; one of the most amazing stories I have ever been in any kind of contact with. To not tell that story would have been disgraceful, in my opinion.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#7. I felt ancient and exhausted. I felt like a prisoner within myself and as if I was just watching a movie that was playing before my eyes. I just wanted all of it to end and disappear; I wanted to disappear.
J.M. Northup
#8. I could not comprehend the justice of that law, or that religion, which upholds or recognizes the principle of slavery;
Solomon Northup
#9. Not since before Roe v. Wade has a law or court decision had the potential to devastate access to reproductive health care on such a sweeping scale.
Nancy Northup
#10. It is the literal, unvarnished truth, that the crack of the lash, and the shrieking of the slaves, can be heard from dark till bed time, on Epps' plantation, any day almost during the entire period of the cotton-picking season.
Solomon Northup
#11. considerable amount in consideration of his services in
Solomon Northup
#12. The terrible lesson Burch taught me, impressed indelibly upon my mind the danger and uselessness of asserting I was a freeman. There was no possibility of any slave being able to assist me, while, on the other hand, there was a possibility of his exposing me.
Solomon Northup
#13. No great manager or leader ever fell from heaven, its learned not inherited.
Tom Northup
#14. I didn't really comprehend what was happening or how tonight had changed us and the course of our future, but I instinctively knew that things would never be the same again. Something had ended and something was definitely beginning, I just didn't have the knowledge base to know what.
J.M. Northup
#15. We have to achieve what we can, and if we haven't yet learned that we are not always going to get our way this could be frustrating.
Anne Northup
#16. Grace allows forgiveness and faith allows hope.
J.M. Northup
#17. All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they are now getting. If we want different results, we must change the way we do things.
Tom Northup
#18. Soon after he purchased me, Epps asked me if I could write and read, and on being informed that I had received some instruction in those branches of education, he assured me, with emphasis, if he ever caught me with a book, or with pen and ink, he would give me a hundred lashes.
Solomon Northup
#19. To ask the master for a knife, or skillet, or any small convenience of the kind, would be answered with a kick, or laughed at as a joke. Whatever necessary article of this nature is found in a cabin has been purchased with Sunday money.
Solomon Northup
#20. I can speak of slavery only so far as it came under my own observation - only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person.
Solomon Northup
#21. My back is thick with scars for protesting my freedom.
Solomon Northup
#22. Death was far less terrible than the living prospect that was before us
Solomon Northup
#23. Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it.
Solomon Northup
#25. There's a reason people run negative ads ... it's because they work.
Anne Northup
#26. I believe that all things are connected; that we're interdependent on one another. I just like feeling the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, and the earth under my feet. It all nourishes me; my soul anyway.
J.M. Northup
#27. So we passed, handcuffed and in silence, through the streets of Washington, through the Captial of a nation, whose theory of government, we are told, rests on the foundation of man's inalienable right to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness! Hail! Columbia, happy land, indeed!
Solomon Northup
#28. case with Cocodrie Bayou, which Solomon must have heard with a starting "p." Here is a list
Solomon Northup
#29. Well, I'm not only a direct descendent of the Anunnaki, but I'm one of the original hybrids. My royal blood is almost pure as I was begotten from the strongest and most ancient of our kind.
J.M. Northup
#31. Again, fear makes people do stupid things," I reminded her. "It can even make you do things you never thought you were capable of. If you're desperate enough you'll even believe things you know aren't true.
J.M. Northup
#32. let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths. Let them know the heart of the poor slave - learn his secret thoughts - thoughts he dare not utter in the hearing of the white man;
Solomon Northup
#33. Even in darkness, there's light. You just need to look for it.
J.M. Northup
#35. Religious hospitals would jeopardize their patients' lives rather than perform a medically necessary abortion.
Nancy Northup
#36. People who felt scared or desperate enough could do almost anything, even things that are extremely out of their character to do; things that are not natural to them. When it came to the human condition, it only took one small spark to light an inferno.
J.M. Northup
#37. I wanted more than anything to connect to someone. I wanted to feel alive again. I just felt dead inside. I could understand how some people just gave up. This darkness was overwhelming.
J.M. Northup
#38. Regardless of the outcome, I needed to know that I lived my life the way I felt was right and just. I needed to let the past be the past and take people as they were in this moment; the only moment to exist.
J.M. Northup
#39. I fell silent after that. I didn't want to talk about such things anymore, at least today. My chest already hurt and I was trying to keep my mind calm. I didn't want to think of a future so bleak and dark. I had plans for my future and they didn't involve the world ending or society collapsing.
J.M. Northup
#41. Alas! I had not then learned the measure of "man's inhumanity to man," nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain
Solomon Northup
#43. There was that part of me that thought if I was already been accused of it and punished for it, then I should just do it. Of course, I didn't want to be that person. Did I?
J.M. Northup
#44. She's erasing me bit by bit and it's painfully obvious that no one can stop her.
J.M. Northup
#45. woollyheads and silvergrays, and am unable to understand
Solomon Northup
#46. There's a sin, a fearful sin, resting on this nation, that will not go unpunished forever. There will be reckoning yet ... it may be sooner or it may be later, but it's a coming as sure as the Lord is just
Solomon Northup
#47. A large family and Democrats have a lot in common: teenagers and Democrats are always happy spending other people's money.
Anne Northup
#48. The law says you have the right to hold a nigger, but begging the law's pardon, it lies ... Is everything right because the law allows it? Suppose they'd pass a law taking away your liberty and making you a slave?
Solomon Northup
#49. Just because we live in a world of chaos and madness doesn't mean we have to subscribe to that sort of behavior.
J.M. Northup
#50. The influence of the iniquitous system necessarily fosters an unfeeling and cruel spirit, even in the bosoms of those who, among their equals, are regarded as humane and generous.
Solomon Northup
#51. Suffice it to say, during the whole long day I came not to the conclusion, even once, that the southern slave, fed, clothed, whipped and protected by his master, is happier than the free colored citizen of the North. To that conclusion I have never since arrived.
Solomon Northup
#53. Still he plied the lash without stint upon my poor body, until it seemed that the lacerated flesh was stripped from my bones at every stroke. A man with a particle of mercy in his soul would not have beaten even a dog so cruelly.
Solomon Northup
#54. I didn't know anything about '12 Years a Slave.' Not the book, not Solomon Northup, which I was quite shocked by, once I'd read it, that it wasn't a seminal text. I think it deserves to be.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#55. It has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public,
Solomon Northup
#56. Sometimes growing pains are by fits and starts.
Anne Northup
#57. Brought up with such ideas - in the notion that we stand without the pale of humanity - no wonder the oppressors of my people are a pitiless and unrelenting race.
Solomon Northup
#58. As I lay in the late hours of night or perhaps the wee hours of morning, I felt content. I'd been right to keep faith and trust when I had no reason to. I didn't expect any grand gestures or magical solutions to things, but my hope was fueled.
J.M. Northup
#59. Why did I even try then? Of course, in asking the question, I'd already known the answer; faith. I hoped; I couldn't help it.
J.M. Northup
#60. Who I really am is the mother of six kids and Woody's wife.
Anne Northup
#61. I think one of the political problems we have in this country is the perspective that all soccer moms think alike, all African-Americans think alike.
Anne Northup
#62. What did that say about me? Had I become one of the monsters I thought I was fighting?
"Things didn't have to be like this," I commented. "He could've made different choices.
J.M. Northup
#63. Credit leads a man into temptation. Cash down is the only thing that will deliver him from evil.
Solomon Northup
#64. There have been hours in my unhappy life, many of them, when the contemplation of death as the end of earthly sorrow - of the grave as a resting place for the tired and worn out body - has been pleasant to dwell upon.
Solomon Northup
#65. Not by human dwellings
not in crowded cities alone, are the sights and sounds of life. The wildest places of the earth are full of them.
Solomon Northup
#66. Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear - dogs, alligators or men!
Solomon Northup
#68. Let not those who have never been placed in like circumstances judge me harshly
Solomon Northup
#69. My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell!
Solomon Northup
#70. The best dancer appeared to be considered the one who could whoop the loudest, jump the farthest, and utter the most excruciating noise.
Solomon Northup
#71. Steve MCQueen created an entire family to tell one man's tale and I am delighted that so many of this family have also been recognised today. I am hugely grateful to the Academy for this great honour, and, of course, to Solomon Northup for sharing his story through his breathtaking book.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#72. There's something to be learned by listening and absorbing and watching before you start telling the people who have been there how to rearrange chairs.
Anne Northup
#73. Although some part of me knew that it was an impossible future, I allowed myself to be immersed fully in my dream. If I couldn't have this future, I would at least have this moment.
J.M. Northup
#74. Sometimes I really hated people in general. I wanted to believe in the good that I knew existed in all of us, but it was so disheartening to see what happened when we let our bad over-rule that good.
J.M. Northup
#75. No one should be forced to delay health care because politicians have the audacity to presume to know what is best for a woman and her family.
Nancy Northup
#76. I ask no paradise on high, With cares on earth oppressed,
The only heaven for which I sigh, Is rest, eternal rest.
Solomon Northup
#77. In today's world if we do what we've always done, we will NOT get what we've always gotten.
Tom Northup
#78. Eliza, stop crying, You let sorrow take over you; you will drown in it
Solomon Northup
#79. Drawn up and signed by the proper parties, wherein Epps acknowledged he
Solomon Northup
#80. There are few sights more pleasant to the eye than a wide cotton field when it is in bloom. It presents an appearance of purity, like an immaculate expanse of light, new-fallen snow.
Solomon Northup
#82. The old fire pit was ancient. I couldn't say how many of my ancestors warmed themselves at this outdoor hearth. Sitting around it was rather affecting, especially when you thought about the countless people who had occupied your very spot in some distant past. It was kind of surreal.
J.M. Northup
#83. I was surprised hearing my own ragged voice. I sounded so hateful and angry. My voice didn't resemble any part of what I knew of myself.
J.M. Northup
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