Frederick Douglass

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

“I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, - a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, - a sanctifier of the most hateful...”

“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, a...”

“Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.”

“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.”

“I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.”

“Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.”

“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”

“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”

“I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.”

“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.”

“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...”

“Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.”

“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.”

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

“Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us!...”

“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.”

“There is not a man beneath the canopy of Heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”

“America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.”

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