Frederick Douglass
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.Collection: Parenting
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.Collection: Life
A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.Collection: Learning
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.Collection: Happiness
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.Collection: Men
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.Collection: Freedom
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.Collection: Future
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.Collection: Society
People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.Collection: Work
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.Collection: Nature
Experience demonstrates that there may be a wages of slavery only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.Collection: Experience
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.Collection: Power
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.Collection: Work
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.Collection: Freedom
When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.Collection: Men
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.Collection: Religion
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.Collection: Strength
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.Collection: Great
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.Collection: Change
One and God make a majority.Collection: God
America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.Collection: Future
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.Collection: Time
The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
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.
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.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
There is not a man beneath the canopy of Heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
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.
Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.
A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.
That which is inhuman cannot be divine.
What to the Slave is the 4th of July.
I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.
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.
Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.
You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.Collection: Justice
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.Collection: Men
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. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.Collection: Wisdom
Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.Collection: Uplifting
A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.Collection: Men
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.Collection: Freedom
A slave is someone who sits down, and waits for someone to free them.Collection: Waiting
I will unite with anyone to do good, but with no one to do harm.Collection: Harm
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.Collection: Reading
There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitutionCollection: Loyalty
Without a struggle, there can be no progress.Collection: Inspirational