50 Frederick Douglass Quotes That Will Motivate You

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50 Best Frederick Douglass Quotes

1. “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

2. “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

3. “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.” – Frederick Douglass

4. “The destiny of the colored American is the destiny of America.” – Frederick Douglass

5. “A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnanimity.” – Frederick Douglass

6. “The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all commanding question for this age and nation to solve.” – Frederick Douglass

7. “I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.” – Frederick Douglass

8. “Immense wealth and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.” – Frederick Douglass

9. “What upon Earth is the matter with the American people? Do they really covet the world’s ridicule as well as their own social and political ruin?” – Frederick Douglass

10. “I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had, till I became my own master.” – Frederick Douglass

11. “It was worth half-cent to kill a ‘nigger’, and a half-cent to bury one.” – Frederick Douglass

12. “From apparently the basest metals we have the finest toned bells.” – Frederick Douglass

13. “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.” – Frederick Douglass

14. “I had a wholesome dread of the consequences of running in debt.” – Frederick Douglass

15. “Inaction is followed by stagnation. Stagnation is followed by pestilence, and pestilence is followed by death.” – Frederick Douglass

16. “No one idea has given rise to more oppression and persecution toward colored people of this country than that which makes Africa, not America, their home.” – Frederick Douglass

17. “The American people are disposed often to be generous rather than just.” – Frederick Douglass

18. “I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.” – Frederick Douglass

19. “At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon the slave and slaveholder.” – Frederick Douglass

20. “You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?” – Frederick Douglass

21. “For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.” – Frederick Douglass

22. “They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family.” – Frederick Douglass

23. “Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these excellent qualities, and her home of its early happiness. Conscience cannot stand much violence.” – Frederick Douglass

24. “Beware of a Yankee when he is feeding.” – Frederick Douglass

25. “For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.” – Frederick Douglass

26. “We were both victims to the same overshadowing evil she, as mistress, I, as slave.” – Frederick Douglass

27. “Should a slave, when assaulted, but raise his hand in self defense, the white assaulting party is fully justified by southern, or Maryland, public opinion, in shooting the slave down.” – Frederick Douglass

28. “As a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor.” – Frederick Douglass

29. “Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves.” – Frederick Douglass

30. “I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man’s political hopes and the ark of his safety.” – Frederick Douglass

31. “Slavery is indeed gone, but its shadow still lingers over the country and poisons more or less the moral atmosphere of all sections of the republic.” – Frederick Douglass

32. “Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of a more horrible state of society?” – Frederick Douglass

33. “If a slave has a bad master, his ambition is to get a better; when he gets a better, he aspires to have the best; and when he gets the best, he aspires to be his own master.” – Frederick Douglass

34. “All of this added weight to his reputation as a ‘nigger-breaker.’” – Frederick Douglass

35. “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” – Frederick Douglass

36. “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” – Frederick Douglass

37. “A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.” – Frederick Douglass

38. “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” – Frederick Douglass

39. “The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.” – Frederick Douglass

40. “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” – Frederick Douglass

41. “I had as well be killed running as die standing.” – Frederick Douglass

42. “He was whipped oftener who was whipped easiest.” – Frederick Douglass

43. “Without a struggle, there can be no progress.” – Frederick Douglass

44. “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” – Frederick Douglass

45. “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

46. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass

47. “Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.” – Frederick Douglass

48. “People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.” – Frederick Douglass

49. “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” – Frederick Douglass

50. “A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.” – Frederick Douglass

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