Frederick Douglass

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

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

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

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

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

I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.

It is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

Without struggle, there is no progress.

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.

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

I have no love for America, as such; I have no patriotism. I have no country.

The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us... I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief.

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.

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

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.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle.

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.

I have ever felt it my duty to stand up for the down-trodden and oppressed, and to speak out for the dumb.