Frederick Douglass's Quotes

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

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

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

A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.

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

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

What to the Slave is the 4th of July.

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

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

I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.

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

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One and God make a majority.

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

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.

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.