I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.
FREDERICK DOUGLASSSome know the value of education by having it. I knew its value by not having it.
More Frederick Douglass Quotes
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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 -
What is possible for me is possible for you.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
A smile or a tear has no nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
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 -
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
Be not discouraged. There is a future for you. The resistance encountered now predicates hope.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
A woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
Poverty, ignorance and degradation are the combined evils, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of the US.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
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.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
The man who is right is a majority. He who has God and conscience on his side, has a majority against the universe.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
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 -
Liberty for all; chains for none.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
You have to take power. No one gives it.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
He who would be free must strike the first blow.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS -
A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS