Frederick Douglass Quotes
140 Frederick Douglass Quotes
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The mind does not take it’s complexion from the skin.
Frederick Douglass
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass
[In 1889] Men first make slaves then make laws.
Frederick Douglass
Speech is the lever that moves the world.
Frederick Douglass
A man’s bread and butter is only insured when he works for it.
Frederick Douglass
[In 1849] The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.
Frederick Douglass
If he knows enough to be hanged, he knows enough to vote.
Frederick Douglass
Give him a bad master, and he aspires to a good master; give him a good master, and he wishes to become his own master. Such is human nature.
Frederick Douglass
To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one.
Frederick Douglass
[In 1865] Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.
Frederick Douglass
[In 1848] Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.
Frederick Douglass
There is no polish without friction.
Frederick Douglass
I am certain that there is nothing good, great or desirable which man can possess in this world, that does not come by some kind of labor, physical or mental, moral or spiritual.
Frederick Douglass
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass
A man who will not labor to gain his rights; is a man who would not, if he had them, prize and defend them.
Frederick Douglass
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
Frederick Douglass
He was whipped oftener who was whipped easiest.
Frederick Douglass
[In 1848] 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
I have always thanked God for making me a man, but Martin Delany always thanked God for making him a black man.
Frederick Douglass
A man must defend himself, if only to demonstrate his fitness to defend anything else.
Frederick Douglass
[In 1887] It has been the fashion of [Euro] American writers to deny that the Egyptians were Negroes and claim that they are of the same race as themselves. This has, I have no doubt, been largely due to a wish to deprive the Negro of the moral support of Ancient Greatness and to appropriate the same to the white race.
Frederick Douglass
[In 1888] Woman knows and feels her wrongs as man cannot know and feel them, and she also knows as well as he can know, what measures are needed to redress them.
Frederick Douglass
[In 1849] To imagine that we shall ever be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We can be modified, changed, and assimilated, but never extinguished.
Frederick Douglass
[In 1894] A little learning indeed may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.
Frederick Douglass
One with god is a majority.
Frederick Douglass
A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.
Frederick Douglass
The history of the Negro race proves them to be wonderfully adapted to all countries, all climates, and all conditions. Their tenacity of life, their powers of endurance, their malleable toughness, would almost imply especial interposition on their behalf.
Frederick Douglass
The general sentiment of mankind is, that a man who will not fight for himself, when he has the means of doing so, is not worth being fought for by others, and this sentiment is just.
Frederick Douglass
A man who does not value freedom for himself will never value it for others, nor put himself to any inconvenience to gain it for others.
Frederick Douglass
It is useless and cruel to put a man on his legs, if the next moment his head is to be brought against a curb-stone.
Frederick Douglass
If the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs!
Frederick Douglass
Liberty came to the Freedman not in mercy, but in wrath, not word choice, but by military necessity, not by the generous action of the people among whom they were to live, and whose goodwill was essential to the success of the measure, but by strangers.
Frederick Douglass
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are those who want crops without plowing up the ground – they want rain without thunder and lightening.
Frederick Douglass
The best defense of free American institutions is the heart of the American people themselves.
Frederick Douglass
[On the 4th of July independence day] I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary.
Frederick Douglass
It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and heaven.
Frederick Douglass
Remember that in a contest with oppression, the almighty has no attribute which can take sides with oppressors.
Frederick Douglass
I have no protection at home, or resting place abroad… I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, an outlaw in the land of my birth. I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were.
Frederick Douglass
Our race and color are not of our own choosing. The only excuse for pride in individuals or race is in the fact of their achievements. Our color is the gift of the almighty. We should neither be proud of it nor ashamed of it.
Frederick Douglass
The question is: can the white and colored people of this country be blended into a common nationality, and enjoy together, in the same country, under the same flag, the inestimable blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as neighborly citizens of a common country? I answer most unhesitantly, I believe they can.
Frederick Douglass
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