Quotes from Frederick Douglass

The more men you make free, the more freedom is strengthened, and the more men you give an interest in the welfare and safety of the State, the greater is the security of the State.

To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.

A man is worked on by what he works on.

A man without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him.

A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men, calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it.

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

We are free to say that in respect to political rights, we hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for men.

Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine

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

It's a poor rule that won't work both ways.

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.

We succeed, not alone by the laborious exertions of our faculties, be they small or great, but by the regular, thoughtful and systematic exercise of them.

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

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

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.

Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.

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.

Our destiny is largely in our hands.

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.

Allow us the dignity to fight for our own freedom

Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it.

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

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.