Frederick Douglass famous quotes

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Inspirational #Change #Freedom

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Inspirational #Motivational #Freedom

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

#Life #Freedom #Work

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

#Irony #Argument #Needed

Mr. Lincoln was not only a great President, but a great man - too great to be small in anything. In his company I was never in any way reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Humble #Men #Color

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Strength

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Life #Being Yourself #Men

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity…a shelter under…which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection
-- Frederick Douglass

#Covering #Shelter #Deeds

This war, disguise it as they may, is virtually nothing more or less than perpetual slavery against universal freedoms.
-- Frederick Douglass

#War #Slavery #May

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

#Respect #Fear #Integrity

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

#Freedom #Power #Demand

One by one I have seen obstacles removed, errors corrected, prejudices softened, proscriptions relinquished, and my people advancing in all the elements that go to make up the sum of the general welfare. And I remember that God reigns in eternity, and that whatever delays, whatever disappointments and discouragements may come, truth, justice, liberty and humanity will ultimately prevail.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Disappointment #Errors #People

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
-- Frederick Douglass

#July #Years #Justice

For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Religious #Found #Mets

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hatethe corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Land #Looks #Calling

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Wisdom #Freedom #Rain

When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Goes On #World #Earth

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 of its liberty, boasting of it's humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?
-- Frederick Douglass

#Love #Law #Land

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

#Prayer #Godly #Years

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Wisdom #Freedom #Men

The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people.
-- Frederick Douglass

#America #People #President

If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Fighting #Government #Support

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Father #Distance #Healing

To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Men #Liberty #Irony

If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Sacrifice #Suffering #Needs

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. 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 found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Struggle #Blow #Tyrants

My hopes were never brighter than now.
-- Frederick Douglass

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

#Men #Black History #Slave

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

#Freedom #Party #Black

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

#Good Luck #Men #Thinking

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

#Honesty #Integrity #War

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

#Party #Men #Anchors

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

#Past #America #Literature

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.
-- Frederick Douglass

#4th Of July #Patriotic #Men

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

#Patriotic #Power #Greatness

Viewing the man from the genuine abolitionist ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed cold, tardy, weak and unequal to the task. But, viewing him from the sentiments of his people, which as a statesman he was bound to respect, then his actions were swift, bold, radical and decisive. Taking the man in the whole, balancing the tremendous magnitude of the situation, and the necessary means to ends, Infinite Wisdom has rarely sent a man into the world more perfectly suited to his mission than Abraham Lincoln.
-- Frederick Douglass

#War #Mean #Men

If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Struggle #Progress #Demand

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

#Motivational #Men #Gentleman

[...] allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put[...] There is no royal road to perfection.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Heart #Opportunity #Perfection

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Justice #Safe #Poverty

There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution
-- Frederick Douglass

#Loyalty #People #Honor

Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Multitudes

What is possible for me is possible for you.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Liberty

Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Uplifting #Mean #Men

Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever...I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Stars #Wind #Forever

Right is of no Sex-Truth is of no Color-God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Sex #Father #Color

Be not discouraged. There is a future for you. . . . The resistance encountered now predicates hope. . .
-- Frederick Douglass

#Hope #Resistance #Discouraged

I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Class #Liberty #Communism

You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Justice #Depth #Height

I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!
-- Frederick Douglass

#Eye #Dark #Night

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Philosophy #Struggle #August

A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Gun #Men #Rights

Educate your sons and daughters, send them to school, and show them that beside the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the jury box, you also have the knowledge box.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Daughter #School #Son

A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Country #Strong #4th Of July

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

#Education #Learning #People

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

#Heartbroken #Letting Go #Meaningful

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Book #Reading #Forever

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.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Freedom #Patriotic #People

I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Men #Thinking #Vision

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

#Men #White #Diversity

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.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Patriotic #Reflection #Appreciate

What to the Slave is the 4th of July.
-- Frederick Douglass

#4th Of July #July #Conservative

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

#Freedom #Patriotic #Men

I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Sad #Country #Light

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.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Peace #Ignorance #Patriotic

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

#Fire #Light #Earthquakes

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

#Slavery #Slave #Found

Your national greatness, swelling vanity; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Religious #Prayer #Greatness

I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Political

You degrade us and then ask why we are degraded. You shut our mouths and ask why we don't speak. You close your colleges and seminaries against us and then ask why we don't know.
-- Frederick Douglass

#College #Justice #Mouths

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

#Freedom #Tyrants #Endurance

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

#Patriotic #Rights #Literature

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Uprising #Causes #Rebellion

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Freedom #Tyrants #Rights

One and God make a majority.
-- Frederick Douglass

#God #Godly #Majority

The opposite of compromise is character.
-- Frederick Douglass

#Character #Opposites #Compromise