Quotes from Frederick Douglass

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.

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

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.

Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.

American labor rights activist, on activities of the National Farm Workers Association Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but human practice may.

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 constitution

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

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

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

To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.

You have to take power. No one gives it.

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

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

I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.

The District of Columbia is the one spot where there is no government for the people, of the people and by the people.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.

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

Be not discouraged. There is a future for you. . . . The resistance encountered now predicates hope. . .

I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity...

I ask you...to adopt the principles proclaimed by yourselves, by your revolutionary fathers, and by the old bell in Independence Hall.

The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness.

The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected.

The mind does not take its complexion from the skin.

Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere