Frederick Douglass Quotes

Frederick Douglass Biography

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Many Northerners also found it hard to believe that such a great orator had been a slave.

Douglass wrote several autobiographies, eloquently describing his life as a slave, and his struggles to be free. His first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, was published in 1845 and was his best-known work, influential in gaining support for abolition. He wrote two more autobiographies, with his last, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1881 and covering events through and after the Civil War. After the Civil War, Douglass remained active in the United States' struggle to reach its potential as a "land of the free". Douglass actively supported women's suffrage. Following the war, he worked on behalf of equal rights for freedmen, and held multiple public offices.

Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant. He was fond of saying, "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." Read more about Frederick Douglass here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
Frederick Douglass

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

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

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
Frederick Douglass

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

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

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

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

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

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass

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

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

One and God make a majority.
Frederick Douglass