Quotes from Frederick Douglass

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others

Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere. It sees plainly the real worth of men and things, and is not easily imposed upon by the dressed up emptiness of human pride.

The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. 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.

I felt some relief in contemplating the resting places of the dead, where there was an end to all distinctions between rich and poor, white and colored, high and low.

You degrade us, and then ask why we are degraded—you shut our mouths, and then ask why we don't speak—you close your colleges and seminaries against us, and then ask us why we don't know more!

I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant, but may my "right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.

Once you learn to read, you'll be forever free. Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion—a pious soul—a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a nigger-breaker.

Once you learn to read you will be forever free

I was suddenly and sharply interrupted by my good old friend Sojourner Truth with a question, Frederick, is God dead? No, I answered, and because God is not dead slavery can only end in blood.

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

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.

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

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.

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.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.

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.

When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world.

The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.

Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.

That which is inhuman cannot be divine.

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.

There is not a man beneath the canopy of Heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.