A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.
– Frederick Douglass
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
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
– Frederick Douglass
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
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.
– Frederick Douglass
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
One and God make a majority.
– Frederick Douglass
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
– Frederick Douglass
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
– Frederick Douglass
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
– Frederick Douglass
The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
– Frederick Douglass
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
– Frederick Douglass
When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.
– Frederick Douglass
People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
– Frederick Douglass
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to opress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
– Frederick Douglass
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
– Frederick Douglass
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
– Frederick Douglass
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.
– Frederick Douglass
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
– Frederick Douglass
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.
– Frederick Douglass
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.
– Frederick Douglass
America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
– Frederick Douglass
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.