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












If there is no struggle there is no progress.
More Frederick Douglass quotes
"Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren
"My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the ...
"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.
"I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
"They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family.
"There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
"To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihil...
"Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.
"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and...
"Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters bef...
"The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and w...
"The frequent hearing of my mistress readingthe bible--for she often read aloud when herhusband was absent--soon awakened mycuriosity in respect to thi...
"At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon the slave and slaveholder.
"A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnamity.