Frederick Douglass Quotes (50 Quotes)


    Be not discouraged. There is a future for you.... The resistance encountered now predicates hope.... Only as we rise ... do we encounter opposition.

    A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

    Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.

    Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.

    Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.


    The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

    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.



    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.

    You have seen how a man was made a slave you shall see how a slave was made a man.

    Your national greatness, swelling vanity your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

    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.

    People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.


    The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.

    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.

    We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the 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.



    I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.

    We had talked long enough we were now ready to move if not now, we never should be and if we did not intend to move now, we had as well fold our arms, sit down, and acknowledge ourselves fit only to be slaves.

    When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.


    I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death

    I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.

    America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

    The chance is now given you to end in a day the bondage of centuries, and to rise in one bound from social degradation to the place of common equality with all other varieties of men


    We are one, our cause is one, and we must help each other if we are to succeed.

    A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.

    A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.

    The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.



    Whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom.

    Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

    I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

    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.

    In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky-her grand old woods-her fertile fields-her beautiful rivers-her mighty lakes and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked when I remember that all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slave-holding and wrong When I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten That her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.

    I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.

    If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters . . .

    Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.


    Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get.

    At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

    Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not liked, either by masters or overseers.

    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.


    More Frederick Douglass Quotations (Based on Topics)


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