Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate 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.

Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things worthy of his doing.

A man's rights are not suspended by his color.

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.

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

The pathway to glory is strewn with thorns and brambles.

The highest good and the highest truth are inseparably connected.

The lesson of the hour is that every man should be true to himself and to his convictions.

There is no power on earth that can hold a man down if he is determined to rise.

The true object of education is to make men thinking beings, to make them moral beings, to make them religious beings.

The highest good is that which is most useful.

The world is not to be moved by the mere recital of wrongs. The world is moved only by the presentation of a remedy.

The very first impulse of the human heart is to be free.

The mind of the slave is the mind of the master.

The light of truth is not to be extinguished by the breath of falsehood.

The true glory of a nation is in its development of humanity.

The struggle for freedom is the struggle for life.

The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops—no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

The right is of no sex—truth is of no color—God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren.

The true friend of man is the friend of his freedom.