Frederick Douglass Quotes

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.

This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

American labor rights activist, on activities of the National Farm Workers Association Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but human practice may.

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

Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not liked, either by masters or overseers.

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.

For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.

They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.

If there is no struggle there is no progress.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

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

From apparently the basest metals we have the finest toned bells.

At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon the slave and slaveholder.

They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family.

The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness.

There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

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