Frederick Douglass Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational Frederick Douglass quotes, sayings and quotations 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?
— Frederick Douglass
Allow us the dignity to fight for our own freedom
— Frederick Douglass
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.
— Frederick Douglass
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.
— Frederick Douglass
Our destiny is largely in our hands.
— Frederick Douglass
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
— Frederick Douglass
This war, disguise it as they may, is virtually nothing more or less than perpetual slavery against universal freedoms.
— Frederick Douglass
Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.
— Frederick Douglass
What is possible for me is possible for you.
— Frederick Douglass
They who study mankind with a whip in their hands will always go wrong.
— Frederick Douglass
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.
— Frederick Douglass
It is the mission of the printer to diffuse light and knowledge by a judicious intermingling of black with white.
— Frederick Douglass
Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document!
— Frederick Douglass
I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.
— Frederick Douglass
Slavery appears such a relatively mild business that one begins to wonder why Frederick Douglass and so many others ever tried to escape.
— Dinesh D'Souza
As Frederick Douglass said, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
— Joshua Wolf Shenk
The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected.
— Frederick Douglass
We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions ... and shall rise and fall with Americans.
— Frederick Douglass
In every era going back to Lincoln with Frederick Douglass, presidents talk to those that were leading at that time.
— Al Sharpton
Without Struggle There Is No Success
— Frederick Douglass
Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere
— Frederick Douglass
There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
— Frederick Douglass
Oppression makes a wise man mad.
— Frederick Douglass
Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren
— Frederick Douglass
I hear the mournful wail of millions!
— Frederick Douglass
Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.
— Frederick Douglass
You have to take power. No one gives it.
— Frederick Douglass
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
— Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass had to teach himself how to read before standing up to defeat slavery.
— Juan Williams
For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.
— Frederick Douglass
I glory in conflict that I may hereafter exult in victory.
— Frederick Douglass
I ask you ... to adopt the principles proclaimed by yourselves, by your revolutionary fathers, and by the old bell in Independence Hall ...
— Frederick Douglass
Be not discouraged. There is a future for you ... The resistance encountered now predicates hope ...
— Frederick Douglass
Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.
— Frederick Douglass
The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.
— Frederick Douglass
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
— Frederick Douglass
This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.
— Frederick Douglass
My hopes were never brighter than now.
— Frederick Douglass
Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.
— Frederick Douglass
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.
— Frederick Douglass
He who is whipped oftenest, is whipped easiest.
— Frederick Douglass
Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
— Frederick Douglass
Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.
— Frederick Douglass
Poverty, ignorance and degradation are the combined evils, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of the US.
— Frederick Douglass
I escaped from slavery and became a leading abolitionist and speaker.
— Frederick Douglass
Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.
— Frederick Douglass
In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.
— Frederick Douglass
Once you learn to read, you will forever be free.
— Frederick Douglass
Heaven's blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions under a ruthless bondage.
— Frederick Douglass
What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.
— Frederick Douglass
I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.
— Frederick Douglass
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
— Frederick Douglass
Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
— Frederick Douglass
Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.
— Frederick Douglass
You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.
— Frederick Douglass
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
— Frederick Douglass
Most successful one was that of tarring his fence all around; after which, if a slave was caught
— Frederick Douglass
We are free to say that in respect to political rights, we hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for men.
— Frederick Douglass
Opportunity is important but exertion is indispensable.
— Frederick Douglass
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
— Frederick Douglass
Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.
— Frederick Douglass
Liberty for all; chains for none.
— Frederick Douglass
In life you don't get everything you pay for, but you must pay for everything you get.
— Frederick Douglass
I was in the midst of an ocean of my fellow-men, and yet a perfect stranger to every one.
— Frederick Douglass
Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.
— Frederick Douglass
Abolition of slavery had been the deepest desire and the great labor of my life
— Frederick Douglass
The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
— Frederick Douglass
Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.
— Frederick Douglass
It was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.
— Frederick Douglass
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.
— Frederick Douglass
Beware of a Yankee when he is feeding,
— Frederick Douglass
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
— Frederick Douglass
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.
— Frederick Douglass
The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.
— Frederick Douglass
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.
— Frederick Douglass
A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnamity.
— Frederick Douglass
Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.
— Frederick Douglass
The opposite of compromise is character.
— Frederick Douglass
At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon the slave and slaveholder.
— Frederick Douglass
The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
— Frederick Douglass
Experience is a keen teacher;
— Frederick Douglass
The man who is right is a majority. He who has God and conscience on his side, has a majority against the universe.
— Frederick Douglass
I had as well be killed running as die standing
— Frederick Douglass
The author said Frederick Douglass described himself as a "graduate" of slavery with the marks of his diploma on his back.
— Harold Holzer
it was worth half-cent to kill a "nigger", and a half-cent to bury one.
— Frederick Douglass
We were both victims to the same overshadowing evil - she, as mistress, I, as slave.
— Frederick Douglass
America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
— Frederick Douglass
The destiny of the colored American ... is the destiny of America.
— Frederick Douglass
I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had, till I became my own master.
— Frederick Douglass
I will unite with anyone to do good, but with no one to do harm.
— Frederick Douglass
The mind does not take its complexion from the skin ...
— Frederick Douglass
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.
— Frederick Douglass
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
— Frederick Douglass
A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.
— Frederick Douglass
I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.
— Frederick Douglass
I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.
— Frederick Douglass
I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
— Frederick Douglass
Let us render the tyrant no aid.
— Frederick Douglass
I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.
— Frederick Douglass
It's a poor rule that won't work both ways.
— Frederick Douglass