Quotes from Frederick Douglass

I was most keenly sensitive to know any and everything possible that had any relation to the subject of slavery. I was all ears, all eyes, whenever the words slave or slavery dropped from the lips of any white person, and more and more frequently occasions occurred when these words came leading ones in high, social debate at our house.

The table groans under the heavy and blood-bought luxuries gathered with painstaking care, at home and abroad. Fields, forests, rivers and seas, are made tributary here. Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste.

Driven intosemi-exile by civil and barbarous laws, and by a system which cannot be thought of without a shudder, I was fullyjustified in turning, if possible, the tide of the moral universeagainst the heaven-daring outrage.

I say , this picture sometimes appalled us, and made us rather bear those ills we had. Than fly to others, that we knew not of.

Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of a more horrible state of society?

H. H. GARNET. We need a thousand such representative

The morality of free society can have no application to slave society. . . .Make a man a slave, and youmrob him of of moral responsibility. Freedom of choice is the essence of all accountability.

Your faculties remained yours, and mine became useful to their rightful owner.

Men talk much of a new birth. The fact is fundamental. But the mistake is in treating it as an incident which can only happen to a man once in a lifetime: whereas the whole journey of life is a succession of them. A new life springs up in the soul with the discovery of every new agency by which the soul is raised to a higher level of wisdom: goodness and joy.

I admit that the slave does sometimes sing, dance and appear to be merry. But what does this prove? It only proves to my mind, that though slavery is armed with a thousand stings, it is not able entirely to kill the elastic spirit of the bondman.

And the only explanation I can now think of does not entirely satisfy me; but such as it is, I will give it. Mr. Covey enjoyed the most unbounded reputation for being a first-rate overseer and negro-breaker. It was of considerable importance to him. That reputation was at stake; and had he sent me—a boy about sixteen years old—to the public whipping-post, his reputation would have been lost; so, to save his reputation, he suffered me to go unpunished.

It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent.

The northern people have been long connected with slavery; they have been linked to a decaying corpse; which has destroyed the moral health. The union of the government; the union of the north and the south, in the political parties; the union in the religious organizations of the land, have all served to deaden the moral sense of the northern people, and to impregnate them with sentiments and ideas forever in conflict with what as a nation we call genius of American institutions.

Welcome, welcome joy, welcome sorrow, welcome pleasure, welcome pain. You are all the ingredients of life -- and with you all, life is an inestimable blessing.

It is good to think that in Heaven all troubles will be over, that war and carnage will be no more, that all injustice, cruelty and wrong shall be no more; but incomparably better is it for a man to gird on the whole armour of truth and righteousness, and wage war with these evils, and banish them from the Earth -- and thus have the will of God done on Earth as done in Heaven.

It was the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and I look back to it now, after so many years, with some complacency and a little wonder that I could have been so earnest and persevering in any pursuit other than for my daily bread. I certainly saw nothing in the conduct of those around to inspire me with such interest: they were all devoted exclusively to what their hands found to do.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Another advantage I gained in my new master was, he made no pretensions to, or profession of, religion; and this, in my opinion, was truly a great advantage.

Reason is imprisoned here, and passions run wild. Like the fires of the prairie, once lighted, they are at the mercy of every wind, and must burn, till they have consumed all that is combustible within their remorseless grasp.

Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring in your efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. Come what may—cost what it may—inscribe on the banner which you unfurl to the breeze, as your religious and political motto—NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY! NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS

All of this added weight to his reputation as a "nigger-breaker.

The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.

Once you learn to read, you will forever be free.

Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.