Frederick Douglass Quotes

• 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

  274

• Power and those in control concede nothing ... without a demand. Hey never have and never will... Each and every one of us must keep demanding, must keep fighting, must keep thundering, must keep plowing, must keep on keeping things struggling, must speak out and speak up until justice is served because where there is no justice there is no peace.

  Frederick Douglass

  2843

• Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all of the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

  Frederick Douglass

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  1866

• From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass (1994). “Autobiographies”, p.816, Library of America

  368

• Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass (1994). “Autobiographies”, p.24, Library of America

  2373

• The Constitutional framers were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men  

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  2027

• ...there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate Army...as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government...There were such soldiers at Manassas and they are probably there still.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass (1952). “The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass: The Civil War, 1861-1865”

  4122

• I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison (1849). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”, p.1

  4053

• 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

  Men  

  Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner, Yuval Taylor (1999). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.102, Chicago Review Press

  5034

• The mind does not take its complexion from the skin.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass, Milton Meltzer (1995). “Frederick Douglass, in his own words”, Harcourt Children's Books

  5129

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

  Frederick Douglass

  1423

• I will unite with anyone to do good, but with no one to do harm.

  Frederick Douglass

  344

• Everybody has asked the question . . . 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass, James Daley (2013). “Great Speeches by Frederick Douglass”, p.57, Courier Corporation

  4191

• The ballot is the only safety.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass, George L. Ruffin (2001). “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time”, p.460, Digital Scanning Inc

  1558

• [A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. 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

  Men  

  Frederick Douglass (2011). “In the Words of Frederick Douglass: Quotations from Liberty’s Champion”, p.237, Cornell University Press

  3599

• I have no protection at home, or resting place abroad. ... I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my birth. I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass (2008). “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”, p.172, Cosimo, Inc.

  2663

• Experience proves that those are oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men  

  Frederick Douglass (2012). “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”, p.340, Courier Corporation

  3691

• 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

  Frederick Douglass (1994). “Autobiographies”, p.409, Library of America

  3831

• No people to whom liberty is given can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass (2012). “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”, p.447, Courier Corporation

  2235

• I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass (1855). “Anti-slavery Movement: A Lecture”, p.33

  949

• The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men  

  Frederick Douglass (2013). “Great Speeches by Frederick Douglass”, p.134, Courier Corporation

  1524

• The Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a citizen of a state and a citizen of the United States.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass (2013). “The Magazine Articles of Frederick Douglass”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

  1329

• Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men   Fog   Blue  

  Frederick Douglass (2013). “The Complete Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass”, p.262, Simon and Schuster

  3239

• I escaped from slavery and became a leading abolitionist and speaker.

  Frederick Douglass

  3805

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

  Frederick Douglass

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  1606

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

  Frederick Douglass

  4417

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

  Frederick Douglass

  Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia,Washington, D.C., Apr. 1886

  4405

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

  Frederick Douglass

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  1046

• Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass (2013). “The Complete Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass”, p.133, Simon and Schuster

  5147

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

  Frederick Douglass

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: The Illustrated Edition”, p.102, Zenith Press

  2191

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