Frederick Douglass Quotes

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and ...

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other p...

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

They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themse...

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

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one clas...

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

My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the ch...

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a gre...

Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren

The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a futur...

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plo...

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

Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, o...

If there is no struggle there is no progress.

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

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

We have all met a class of men, very remarkable for their activity, and who yet make but little head...

She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had becom...

What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding relig...

...I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds...

...I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocr...

These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them be...

Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his hea...

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

It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the population of the earth coul...

They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time negle...

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no othe...

I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this event as a special interposit...

Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and te...

...The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evi...

You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and M a slave! You move mer...

For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever...

I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead...

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid ...

e have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibl...

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slav...

The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal wo...

The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic Am...

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

In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky — her grand old woods —...

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

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than t...

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

Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer fr...

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plow...

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

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

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm,...

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct o...

I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any ...

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate...

One and God make a majority.

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

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he w...

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

[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent...

The frequent hearing of my mistress readingthe bible--for she often read aloud when herhusband was a...

The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped lo...

Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the gro...

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

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than a...

A smile or a tear has not nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above al...

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

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

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without p...

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

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

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

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