Quotes from Frederick Douglass

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.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.

it was worth half-cent to kill a nigger, and a half-cent to bury one.

My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.

This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation.

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

When I went into their family, it was the abode of happiness and contentment. The mistress of the house was a model of affection and tenderness. Her fervent piety and watchful uprightness made it impossible to see her without thinking and feeling—that woman is a Christian.

Poets, prophets and reformers are all picture-makers -- and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements. They see what ought to be by the reflection of what is, and endeavor to remove the contradiction

The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart

I had a wholesome dread of the consequences of running in debt.

From apparently the basest metals we have the finest toned bells.

We were both victims to the same overshadowing evil—she, as mistress, I, as slave.

To enslave men, successfully and safely, it is necessary to have their minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of which they are deprived. A certain degree of attainable good must be kept before them.

A man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the produce of sugar,—and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women,—before he is ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.

For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.

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

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.

How do you feel, said a friend to me, when you are hooted and jeered on the street on account of your color? I feel as if an ass had kicked, but had hit nobody, was my answer.

The truth was, that he had not whipped me at all. I considered him as getting entirely the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him. The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger. He would occasionally say, he didn't want to get hold of me again. No, thought I, you need not; for you will come off worse than you did before.

They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family.

He was whipped oftener who was whipped easiest.

Slavery blunts the edge of all our rebukes of tyranny abroad - the criticisms that we make upon other nations, only call forth ridicule, contempt, and scorn. In a word, we are made a reproach and a by-word to a mocking earth, and we must continue to be so made, so long as slavery continues to pollute our soil.

Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves.

You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.