Quotes By Frederick Douglass

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

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

What to the Slave is the 4th of July.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Without a struggle, there can be no 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 soul that is within me no man can degrade.