“Liberty for all; chains for none.”

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

The destiny of the colored American is the destiny of America.

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

The silver trump of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness.

To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

The mind does not take its complexion from the skin.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

Educate your sons and daughters, send them to school, and show them that beside the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the jury box, you also have the knowledge box.

A woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments.

Oppression makes a wise man mad.

What is possible for me is possible for you.

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.

The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it.

Marriage is like a golden ring in a chain, whose beginning is a glance and whose ending is eternity.

Marriage is like a golden ring in a chain, whose beginning is a glance and whose ending is eternity.

So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries unite!

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.