Frederick Douglass Quotes

I love the religion of Christianity - which cometh from above - which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy.

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.

These were choice documents to me... They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance.

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.

They who study mankind with a whip in their hands will always go wrong.

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.

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

Liberty for all; chains for none.

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.

What to the Slave is the 4th of July.

Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.

A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnamity.

The District of Columbia is the one spot where there is no government for the people, of the people and by the people.

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.

A man is worked on by what he works on.

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

Despite of it all, the Negro remains... cool, strong, imperturbable, and cheerful.

In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.

A man without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him.

The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing.

I glory in the conflict, that I may hereafter exult in the victory. I know that victory is certain.

A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men, calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it.

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers.

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

It is the mission of the printer to diffuse light and knowledge by a judicious intermingling of black with white.

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

... and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty.

Without Struggle There Is No Success

Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.

Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character.

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.

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

Allow us the dignity to fight for our own freedom

Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.

Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.

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.

The ballot is the only safety.

It was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.

He who is whipped oftenest, is whipped easiest.

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

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

The Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government.

I had as well be killed running as die standing

Money is the measure of morality, and the success or failure of slavery as a money-making system, determines with many whether...it should be maintained or abolished.

The sunlight that has brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.

...of whom I can say with a grateful heart, 'I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger, and he took me in.'

Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.

Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.

Heaven's blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions under a ruthless bondage.