Frederick Douglass Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
-- Frederick DouglassSource : Frederick Douglass (2014). “Frederick Douglass on Slavery and the Civil War: Selections from His Writings”, p.42, Courier Corporation
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“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
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“Mr. Lincoln was not only a great President, but a great man - too great to be small in anything. In his company I was never in any way reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
-- Frederick DouglassSource : "The 100 best nonfiction books: No 68 - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass (1845)" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2017.
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“The soul that is within me no man can degrade.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“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 shelter under…which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection”
-- Frederick Douglass -
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“This war, disguise it as they may, is virtually nothing more or less than perpetual slavery against universal freedoms.”
-- 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 DouglassSource : Frederick Douglass (2013). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”, p.54, Simon and Schuster
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“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“One by one I have seen obstacles removed, errors corrected, prejudices softened, proscriptions relinquished, and my people advancing in all the elements that go to make up the sum of the general welfare. And I remember that God reigns in eternity, and that whatever delays, whatever disappointments and discouragements may come, truth, justice, liberty and humanity will ultimately prevail.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
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“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“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 -
“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hatethe corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
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“When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied it's privileges by the law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of it's humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
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“The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
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“If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“My hopes were never brighter than now.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
“You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”
-- Frederick Douglass -
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“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 -
“I do not think much of the good luck theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value.”
-- Frederick Douglass
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