93 Frederick Douglass Quotes reflecting his wisdom and legacy

Frederick Douglass was a great African-American reformer and also an excellent writer, editor, and public speaker. He left an indelible mark on history through his powerful words, speeches, and autobiographical works. Born into slavery in 1818, Douglass escaped bondage at a young age and became a prominent voice in the fight against slavery and for civil rights. Throughout his life, he shared profound insights on freedom, equality, and the power of education. Frederick Douglass’s words continue to echo through time, inspiring people to fight against injustice and work towards a more equitable world. His quotes remind us of the value of education, integrity, and the importance of collective action. In this article, we will explore some of the most impactful and timeless Frederick Douglass quotes.

Frederick Douglass Quotes

1. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” ~ Frederick Douglass

2. “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” ~ Frederick Douglass

3. “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” ~ Frederick Douglass

4. “The soul that is within me no man can degrade.” ~ Frederick Douglass

5. “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” ~ Frederick Douglass
6. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” ~ Frederick Douglass
7. “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” ~ Frederick Douglass
8. “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” ~ Frederick Douglass
9. “Some know the value of education by having it. I know its value by not having it.” ~ Frederick Douglass
10. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass

Quotes by Frederick Douglass

11. “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”- Frederick Douglass
12. “It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” ~ Frederick Douglass
13. “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.” ~ Frederick Douglass
14. “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” ~ Frederick Douglass
15. “The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.” ~ Frederick Douglass
16. “I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.” ~ Frederick Douglass
17. “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.” ~ Frederick Douglass
18. “Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.” ~ Frederick Douglass
19. “What to the Slave is the 4th of July.” ~ Frederick Douglass
20. “There is not a man beneath the canopy of Heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.” ~ Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass Quote

21. “Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.” ~ Frederick Douglass
22. “Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.” ~ Frederick Douglass
23. “A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnamity.” ~ Frederick Douglass
24. “What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.” ~ Frederick Douglass
25. “I should esteem it a privilege to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other. I am your fellow-man, but not your slave.” ~ Frederick Douglass
26. “The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.” ~ Frederick Douglass
27. “A smile or a tear has not nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man.” ~ Frederick Douglass
28. “The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.” ~ Frederick Douglass
29. “The destiny of the colored American … is the destiny of America.” ~ Frederick Douglass
30. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass

Greatest Frederick Douglass Quotes

31. “Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.” ~ Frederick Douglass
32. “A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.” ~ Frederick Douglass
33. “Our destiny is largely in our hands.” ~ Frederick Douglass
34. “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” ~ Frederick Douglass
35. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass
36. “A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.” ~ Frederick Douglass
37. “People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.” ~ Frederick Douglass
38. “Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.” ~ Frederick Douglass
39. “Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.” ~ Frederick Douglass
40. “A man is worked on by what he works on.” ~ Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass Quotes

41. “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.” ~ Frederick Douglass
42. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass
43. “A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.” ~Frederick Douglass
44. “A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.” ~ Frederick Douglass
45. “My hopes were never brighter than now.” ~ Frederick Douglass
46. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass
47. “I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had, till I became my own master.” ~ Frederick Douglass
48. “Experience is a keen teacher.” ~ Frederick Douglass
49. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass
50. “He treated me as a man… He did not let me feel for a moment that there was any difference in the color of our skins.” ~ Frederick Douglass

Best Frederick Douglass Quotes

51. “They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family.” ~ Frederick Douglass
52. “Men talk of the Negro problem. There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their Constitution”~ Frederick Douglass
53. “For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.”~ Frederick Douglass
54. “One and God make a majority.”~ Frederick Douglass
55. “Without any appeal to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, it was enough to accept God as a father, to regard slavery as a crime. I”~ Frederick Douglass
56. “I had a wholesome dread of the consequences of running in debt.”~ Frederick Douglass
57. “For no man who lives at all lives unto himself. He either helps or hinders all who are in anywise connected to him.”~ Frederick Douglass
58. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass
59. “We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!!” ~ Frederick Douglass
60. “I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity…” ~ Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass Famous Quotes

61. “You have to take power. No one gives it.” ~ Frederick Douglass
62. “I will unite with anyone to do good, but with no one to do harm.” ~ Frederick Douglass
63. “Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.” ~ Frederick Douglass
64. “He was whipped oftener who was whipped easiest.”~ Frederick Douglass
65. “A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.” ~ Frederick Douglass
66. “No people to whom liberty is given can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant.” ~ Frederick Douglass
67. “The silver trump of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness.” ~ Frederick Douglass
68. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass
69. “As a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor.”~ Frederick Douglass
70. “No man whose vision is bounded by colour can come into contact with what is highest and best in the world.”~ Frederick Douglass

Inspiring Frederick Douglass Quotes

71. “Stars shall fall from heaven.” ~ Frederick Douglass
72. “I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.”~ Frederick Douglass
73. “It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.”~ Frederick Douglass
74. “Your faculties remained yours, and mine became useful to their rightful owner.”~ Frederick Douglass
75. “Truth shines with brighter light and intenser heat at every moment, and a country torn and rent and bleeding implores relief from its distress and agony.” ~ Frederick Douglass
76. “Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people.”~ Frederick Douglass
77. “Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.”~ Frederick Douglass
78. “From apparently the basest metals we have the finest toned bells.”~ Frederick Douglass
79. “You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.”~ Frederick Douglass
80. “A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.” ~ Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass Quotes

81. “Neither we, nor any other people, will ever be respected till we respect ourselves and we will never respect ourselves till we have the means to live respectfully.” ~ Frederick Douglass
82. “Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of a more horrible state of society?”~ Frederick Douglass
83. “The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.”~ Frederick Douglass
84. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass
85. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass
86. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass
87. “Alas! I had not then learned the measure of “man’s inhumanity to man,” nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain.” ~ Frederick Douglass
88. “To be accused was to be convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one always following the other with immutable certainty.” ~ Frederick Douglass
89. “We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake…the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes…denounced.” ~ Frederick Douglass

More Frederick Douglass Quotes

91. “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.” ~ Frederick Douglass
92. “The reading of these speeches added much to my limited stock of language, and enabled me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts, which had frequently flashed through my soul, and died away for want of utterance.” ~ Frederick Douglass
93. “The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek.” ~ Frederick Douglass

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