Frederick Douglass Quotes

Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

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.

We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is work.

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.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.

The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.

A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.