Frederick Douglass Quotes
You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.
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.
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
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.
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.
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
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.
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.
In life you don't get everything you pay for, but you must pay for everything you get.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.
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.
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.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
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.
We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans.
The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.
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.
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.
Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
Be not discouraged. There is a future for you. . . . The resistance encountered now predicates hope. . .
Fortune may crowd a man's life with fortunate circumstances and happy opportunities, but they will, as we all know, avail him nothing unless he makes a wise and vigorous use of them.
The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.
If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.
In the struggle for justice, the only reward is the opportunity to be in the struggle. You can't expect that you're going to have it tomorrow. You just have to keep working on it.
