Underground Quotes
Clara: Sometimes I want to hurt myself...Not like what you don. Just maybe slashing my face, force everyone to look at how it feel on the inside.
Ernestine: That's the worst kind of control. Destroying yourself 'for they can.
This ain't about me speaking. Y'all don't really want that. 'Cause then half of y'all standing here would have to admit to taking the devil's blood. This ain't even about what I have done. It's about shaming others so they don't do anything you don't want them to do. This here ain't family.
Ernestine
You ain't got no family but we.
Preacher
It's hard to untether how much I care for the cause with how far I'm willing to go for it. While I admire Georgia's resilient efforts towards peace, the fervor and forthrightness of John Brown's followers is hard to deny. It speaks to the anger that has consumed me since John's death.
Elizabeth
You gave those men and women something they never had. When you asked them to run with you, you gave them a choice.
William Still
A man has to decide what kind of fighter he's gonna be. You can run from the punches or your can throw them.
Cato
Devi: So this is all I get? The deed to your flat? You asked me to marry you and now you treat me like a whore. Why? Is that where I failed? You need someone to hurt you. To remind you that you're nothing. That you're just worthless property. I thought you wanted better.
Cato: I do.
Cato: Noah, always the man with a plan, but what? You can't finish a fair fight?
Noah: Ain't nothing fair about this! Ain't nothing fair about any of what you put me through. I help folks. I save folks. When is it my turn?
Cato: Whatchu planning to do about it,hmm?
Noah: They already killing enough of us. I ain't about to help 'em. That's where we're different.
Every day it's becoming clear that there is no such thing as a middle-ground. Inaction is nothing but a slow death...poison, running through us, building up. Every citizen must make a choice. Are you for the cause, or are you against us? Slavery is violence, full-stop, and those who hold fast oppression are refusing peace and testing the limits of the peaceful. Those who make peace impossible, make violence inevitable.
Elizabeth
The difference between me and Noah, and between me and the rest of them, is that everyone else hides who they really are. Everybody is selfish, looking for whatever power they can have and calling it freedom.
Cato
I chose to come back, 'cause now I see what this country needs. It needs to be torn down to nothing. It needs a forest fire, a biblical flood, an earthquake that rips it in half. It needs me.
Cato
Why do you assume that I need some deep, personal reason to fight this war? Slavery is wrong. I know that. You know that. Your late husband knew it. He was shot in cold-blood because of it. Now ain't that enough reason to take up arms to end it?
Lucas
