Frederick Douglass quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Frederick Douglass on Wise Famous Quotes.

What upon Earth is the matter with the American people? Do they really covet the world's ridicule as well as their own social and political ruin?

Allow us the dignity to fight for our own freedom

No people to whom liberty is given can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

Our destiny is largely in our hands.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

This war, disguise it as they may, is virtually nothing more or less than perpetual slavery against universal freedoms.

Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.

What is possible for me is possible for you.

They who study mankind with a whip in their hands will always go wrong.

The sunlight that has brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.

It is the mission of the printer to diffuse light and knowledge by a judicious intermingling of black with white.

Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document!

It's easier to build strong children then repair broken men.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.

From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen.

The silver trump of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness.

He who would be free must strike the first blow.

Without struggle there can be no forward progress!

Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.

Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

He who is whipped oftenest, is whipped easiest.

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.

Poverty, ignorance and degradation are the combined evils, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of the US.

The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.

Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.

In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.

Once you learn to read, you will forever be free.

The ballot is the only safety.

From apparently the basest metals we have the finest toned bells.

As those who believe in the visibility of ghosts can easily see them, so it is always easy to see repulsive qualities in those we despise and hate.

We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!!

A man is worked on by what he works on.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart

A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

Despite of it all, the Negro remains ... cool, strong, imperturbable, and cheerful.

Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place.

If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.

I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity.

They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family.

A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.

It is better to be part of a great whole than to be the whole of a small part.

The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.

I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.

The District of Columbia is the one spot where there is no government for the people, of the people and by the people.

Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it.

When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.

The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.

I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.

I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

It's a poor rule that won't work both ways.

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.

In life you don't get everything you pay for, but you must pay for everything you get.

Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.

Abolition of slavery had been the deepest desire and the great labor of my life

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.

We are free to say that in respect to political rights, we hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for men.

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

Beware of a Yankee when he is feeding,

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnamity.

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.

The opposite of compromise is character.

For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.

I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.

Without any appeal to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, it was enough to accept God as a father, to regard slavery as a crime. I

Most successful one was that of tarring his fence all around; after which, if a slave was caught

Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.

Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren

I hear the mournful wail of millions!

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

You have to take power. No one gives it.

A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.

Heaven's blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions under a ruthless bondage.

I ask you ... to adopt the principles proclaimed by yourselves, by your revolutionary fathers, and by the old bell in Independence Hall ...

Be not discouraged. There is a future for you ... The resistance encountered now predicates hope ...

The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected.

The mind does not take its complexion from the skin ...

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

The destiny of the colored American ... is the destiny of America.

I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had, till I became my own master.

I will unite with anyone to do good, but with no one to do harm.

The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

I do not think much of the good luck theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value.