Frederick Douglass quotes speaks about his life as a slave before and after his escape and his faith in God. He later became a strong fighter for the freedom of blacks in America, another person who escaped slavery was Harriet Tubman. He may have helped pave the way for other activists in later years, men like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X for example.
Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and grew up as a slave in the eastern parts of Maryland. He was an American abolitionist, orator, Statesman, social reformer and writer. He escaped in 1838 from Wye Plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. Below are a number of his famous quotes.
Quote #1 “I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety." |
Quote #2 “A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people." |
Quote #3 “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." |
Quote #4 “Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.” |
Quote #5 “I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.” |
Quote #6 "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." |
Quote #7 “When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind." |
Quote #8 “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." |
Quote #9 “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." |
Quote #10 “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." |
Quote #11 “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." |
Quote #12 “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.” |
Quote #13 “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." |
Quote #14 “Without a struggle, there can be no progress." |
Quote #15 “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground." |
Quote #16 “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." |
Quote #17 “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs." |
Quote #18 “People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get." |
Quote #19 “The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery." |
Quote #20 "To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker." |
Quote #21 “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." |
Quote #22 "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." |
Quote #23 “Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work." |
Quote #24 "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." |
Quote #25 “Without Struggle There Is No Success." |
Quote #26 “A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me." |
Quote #27 “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." |
Quote #28 “It is easier to build strong men, than to repair broken ones." |
Quote #29 "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 #30 “It's easier to build strong children then repair broken men." |
Quote #31 “If there is no struggle, there is no progress." |
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Quote #33 “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." |
Quote #34 “Power concedes nothing without a demand." |
Quote #35 “I had as well be killed running as die standing." |
Quote #36 “The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous." |
Quote #37 “The destiny of the colored American ... is the destiny of America." |
Quote #38 “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" |
Quote #39 “Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude." |
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Quote #41 “Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it." |
Quote #42 “A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnamity." |
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Quote #44 “The silver trump of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness." |
Quote #45 “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 #46 “Our destiny is largely in our hands." |
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Frederick Douglass quotes are from a man who fought tooth and nail to gain his freedom which he eventually got by running away. I hope that his struggle for freedom will inspire us all to free ourselves from whatever may be holding us in bondage, it may be mental or some other issue, but regardless seek freedom.
