Frederick Douglass Quotes

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and M a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedoms swift winged angel...

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

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 soul that is within me no man can degrade.

At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon the slave and slaveholder.

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

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

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

I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this event as a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But I should be false to the earlierst sentiments of my soul,...

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

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

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

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

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

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

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

These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable...

The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied it's privileges by the law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting o...