Frederick Douglass
Heaven's blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions under a ruthless bondage.Collection: Freedom
I escaped from slavery and became a leading abolitionist and speaker.Collection: Slavery
In one point of view, we, the abolitionists and colored people, should meet [the Dred Scott] decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears, in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the downfall and complete overthrow of the whole slave system.Collection: Views
Men of Color, To Arms! The case is before you. This is our golden opportunity. Let us accept it, and forever wipe out the dark reproaches unsparingly hurled against us by our enemies. Let us win for ourselves the gratitude of our country, and the best blessings of our posterity through all time.Collection: Country
Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.Collection: Men
Self-Made Men are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results.Collection: Mean
Everybody has asked the question . . . '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. Do nothing with us!Collection: Answers
Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swineCollection: Horse
Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man.Collection: Men
Money is the measure of morality, and the success or failure of slavery as a money-making system, determines with many whether...it should be maintained or abolished.Collection: Slavery
Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.Collection: Teacher
The sunlight that has brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.Collection: Healing
I have no protection at home, or resting place abroad. ... I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my birth. I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were.Collection: Father
It is the mission of the printer to diffuse light and knowledge by a judicious intermingling of black with white.Collection: White
Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character.Collection: Character
I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.Collection: Song
They who study mankind with a whip in their hands will always go wrong.Collection: Hands
... and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Country
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.Collection: July
A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.Collection: Men
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.Collection: Men
The thought of only being a creature of the present and the 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.Collection: Determination
The silver trump of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness.Collection: Soul
Right is of no Sex-Truth is of no Color-God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.Collection: Sex
If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote.Collection: Fighting
Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.Collection: Reading
Our community belongs to us and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory or covered in shame, we cannot but share its character and destiny.Collection: Character
Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.Collection: Brother
My hopes were never brighter than now.Collection: Brighter
The District of Columbia is the one spot where there is no government for the people, of the people and by the people.Collection: Government
If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.Collection: Men
Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever... I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.Collection: Stars
[...] 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.Collection: Wise
A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.Collection: Country
I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!Collection: Eye
From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.Collection: Cheer
I have one great political idea... That idea is an old one. It is widely and generally assented to; nevertheless, it is very generally trampled upon and disregarded. The best expression of it, I have found in the Bible. It is in substance, "Righteousness exalteth a nation - sin is a reproach to any people." This constitutes my politics, the negative and positive of my politics, and the whole of my politics... I feel it my duty to do all in my power to infuse this idea into the public mind, that it may speedily be recognized and practiced upon by our people.Collection: Expression
In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world.Collection: Government
We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans.Collection: War
Once you read, you will be free forever.Collection: Forever
There is a class of people who seem to think that if a man should fall overboard into the sea with a Bible in his pocket it would hardly be possible to drown. I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.Collection: Fall
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.Collection: Ignorance
Liberty for all; chains for none.Collection: Liberty
In the struggle for justice, the only reward is the opportunity to be in the struggle. You can't expect that you're going to have it tomorrow. You just have to keep working on it.Collection: Struggle
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.Collection: Country
The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors.... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!Collection: Country
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all of the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.Collection: Practice