"But the broader reason why there weren't more slave rebellions is simpler: most slaves didn't want to rebel. This depressing fact is not limited to African slaves in America, but rather is a product of human nature and our ability to adapt, to be conditioned out of fear, and to serve. Frederick Douglass explained that slaves chose not to rebel out of fear of the unknown, which, he wrote, quoting Hamlet, had made slaves "rather bear those ills we had/than fly to others, that we knew not of.""