Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. Here we have to share Frederick Douglass quotes on life, family, power, ignorance, slavery, inspirational, and motivational.
Frederick Douglass was born in February 1818, in Talbot County, Maryland, United States, and died on February 20, 1895, in Washington, D.C., United States. His father’s name is Anthony Aaron and his mother’s name is Harriet Bailey. His wife’s name is Anna Murray (m. 1838; died 1882) Helen Pitts (m. 1884).
Frederick Douglass Quotes
The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous. – Frederick Douglass
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. – Frederick Douglass
America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. – Frederick Douglass
I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted. – Frederick Douglass
I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man’s political hopes and the ark of his safety. – Frederick Douglass
I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave. – Frederick Douglass
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous. – Frederick Douglass
A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnanimity. – Frederick Douglass
I had a wholesome dread of the consequences of running in debt. – Frederick Douglass
Some know the value of education by having it. I know it’s valued by not having it. – Frederick Douglass
The man who is right is the majority. He who has God and conscience on his side has a majority against the universe. – Frederick Douglass
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. – Frederick Douglass
Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. – Frederick Douglass
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. – Frederick Douglass
Alas! I had not then learned the measure of “man’s inhumanity to man,” nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain. – Frederick Douglass
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. – Frederick Douglass
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My hopes were never brighter than now. – Frederick Douglass
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. – Frederick Douglass
I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had until I became my own master. – Frederick Douglass
I had as well be killed running as die standing. – Frederick Douglass
One and God make a majority. – Frederick Douglass
They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family. – Frederick Douglass
Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. – Frederick Douglass
There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. – Frederick Douglass
In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights, and a common destiny. – Frederick Douglass
What to the Slave is the 4th of July? – Frederick Douglass
The silver trump of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness. – Frederick Douglass
The right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren. – Frederick Douglass
The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion. – Frederick Douglass
People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. – Frederick Douglass
When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind. – Frederick Douglass
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future. – Frederick Douglass
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. – Frederick Douglass
A smile or a tear has not nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man. – Frederick Douglass
A little learning, indeed, maybe a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people. – Frederick Douglass
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. – Frederick Douglass
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. – Frederick Douglass
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. – Frederick Douglass
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man, not a gentleman can insult me. – Frederick Douglass
The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery. – Frederick Douglass
I prayed for freedom for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. – Frederick Douglass
Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency; – Frederick Douglass
We were both victims to the same overshadowing evil—she, as a mistress, I, as a slave. – Frederick Douglass
Beware of a Yankee when he is feeding, – Frederick Douglass
The soul that is within me no man can degrade. – Frederick Douglass
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man. – Frederick Douglass
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. – Frederick Douglass
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. – Frederick Douglass
From apparently the basest metals we have the finest toned bells. – Frederick Douglass
The thought of only being a creature of the present and past was troubling. I longed for a future too, with hope in it. The desire to be free awakened my determination to act, to think, and to speak. – Frederick Douglass
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. – Frederick Douglass
A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it. – Frederick Douglass
Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done. – Frederick Douglass
The destiny of the colored American … is the destiny of America. – Frederick Douglass
It was worth half-cent to kill a “nigger”, and a half-cent to bury one. – Frederick Douglass
The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve. – Frederick Douglass
A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him. – Frederick Douglass
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. – Frederick Douglass
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. – Frederick Douglass
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. – Frederick Douglass
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 cruelest and cowardly, of all others. – Frederick Douglass
The most successful one was that of tarring his fence all around; after which, if a slave was caught. – Frederick Douglass
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. – Frederick Douglass
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. – Frederick Douglass
How do you feel,” said a friend to me, “when you are hooted and jeered on the street on account of your color?” “I feel as if an ass had kicked, but had hit nobody,” was my answer. – Frederick Douglass
Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out. – Frederick Douglass
“They’ll read and sing a sacred song,
And make a prayer both loud and long,
And teach them right and do the wrong,
Hailing the brother, sister, throng,
With words of heavenly union.” – Frederick Douglass
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