QUOTES by Frederick Douglass
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“Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“Slavery blunts the edge of all our rebukes of tyranny abroad - the criticisms that we make upon other nations, only call forth ridicule, contempt, and scorn. In a word, we are made a reproach and a by-word to a mocking earth, and we must continue to be so made, so long as slavery continues to pollute our soil.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“Should a slave, when assaulted, but raise his hand in self defense, the white assaulting party is fully justified by southern, or Maryland, public opinion, in shooting the slave down.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“and stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural eloquence a prodigy—in soul manifestly "created but a little lower than the angels"—yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,—trembling for his safety, hardly daring to believe”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“Beat and cuff your slave, keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog; but, feed and clothe him well, - work him moderately - surround him with physical comfort, - and dreams of freedom intrude. Give him a bad master, and he aspires to a good master; give him a good master, and he wishes to become his own master.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnamity.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”
Quote by -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 most cruel and cowardly, of all others.”
Quote by -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.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had mastered your A B C, or knew where the "white sails" of the Chesapeake were bound, you began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave, not by his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the cruel and blighting death which gathers over his soul.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“For no man who lives at all lives unto himself. He either helps or hinders all who are in anywise connected to him.”
Quote by -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.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“We were both victims to the same overshadowing evil—she, as mistress, I, as slave.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”
Quote by -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.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“A man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the produce of sugar,—and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women,—before he is ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“To enslave men, successfully and safely, it is necessary to have their minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of which they are deprived. A certain degree of attainable good must be kept before them.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“Men talk of the Negro problem. There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their Constitution”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“The control of events has been taken out of our hands...we have fallen into the mighty current of eternal principles-invisible forces-which are shaping and fashioning events as they wish, using us only as instruments to work out their own results in our national destiny.”
Quote by -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;”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“What upon Earth is the matter with the American people? Do they really covet the world's ridicule as well as their own social and political ruin?”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“The Irish, who, at home, readily sympathize with the oppressed everywhere, are instantly taught when they step upon our soil to hate and despise the Negro...Sir, the Irish-American will one day find out his mistake.”
Quote by -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.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“it was worth half-cent to kill a "nigger", and a half-cent to bury one.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“endless action and reaction. Those beautifully rounded pebbles which you gather on the sand and which you hold in your hand and marvel at their exceeding smoothness, were chiseled into their varies and graceful forms by the ceaseless action of countless waves. Nature is herself a great worker and never tolerates, without certain rebuke, any contradiction to her wise example. Inaction is followed by stagnation. Stagnation is followed by pestilence and pestilence is followed by death.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass
“endless action and reaction. Those beautifully rounded pebbles which you gather on the sand and which you hold in your hand and marvel at their exceeding smoothness, were chiseled into their varies and graceful forms by the ceaseless action of countless waves. Nature is herself a great worker and never tolerates, without certain rebuke, any contradiction to her wise example. Inaction is followed by stagnation. Stagnation is followed by pestilence and pestilence is followed by death.”
Quote by -Frederick Douglass