Quotes By Frederick Douglass

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

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

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

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.

Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

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.

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

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

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

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

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

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.

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

One and God make a majority.

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

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

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

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

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

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