Quotes About Liberation

Your anger is a gift.

Freedom is such a gift.

Sometimes it's nice when you go out on the road, and you come back, and your girlfriend's left you. You have complete freedom at that point.

I'm so glad I'm not in college anymore. I'm so glad I'm not having kids.

I know that I'm glad to be divorced and on my own.

Drinking made me a lot more free sexually; the restrictions were off. I was a compulsive, compliant 'good girl' by day and a 'bad girl' at night.

But I found that disappointing people is a good thing, because disapproval is freedom.

I've tried to do the sad-bastard thing for long enough. I just want to have a good time.

When you're younger you've got all these hang-ups, but when you get to your 50s you just have a good time.

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

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.

Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.

I have often been asked how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the "quick round of blood," I lived more in that one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but tamely describe.

When I think that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready to ask, Does a righteous God govern the universe? and for what does he hold the thunders in his right hand, if not to smite the oppressor, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the spoiler?

Once you learn to read, you'll free forever.

You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free!

Slaveholders have no rights more than any other thief or pirate. They have forfeited even the right to live, and if the slave should put every one of them to the sword tomorrow, who dare pronounce the penalty disproportioned to the crime or say that the criminals deserved less than death at the hands of their long-abused chattels? (The North Star, Volume II, #7 February 9, 1849)

Frederick Douglass

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.

What is the seal of liberation? Not to be ashamed in front of oneself.

There is a false saying: "How can someone who can't save himself save others?" Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?

Your educators can only be your liberators.

There is a false saying, 'Whoever cannot save himself - how can he save others?' But if I have the key to your chains, why should your and my lock be the same.

Some cannot loosen their own chains and can nonetheless redeem their friends.