Frederick Douglass Quotes

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Frederick Douglass

Profession : Author

Birth : February 14, 1818

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Frederick Douglass

Experience demonstrates that there may be a wages of slavery only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.

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

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

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 an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Frederick Douglass

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Frederick Douglass

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

Frederick Douglass

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

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

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

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

Frederick Douglass

I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.

Frederick Douglass

A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.

Frederick Douglass

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

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 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

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

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.

Frederick Douglass

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

Frederick Douglass