Frederick Douglass

What to the slave is the Fourth of July?

I am a Republican, a black Republican, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and I mean to die a Republican.

I have no doubt that the time will come when the colored people of this country will be as free and as happy as any other people.

I am a man, and I have a right to be treated as a man.

I have no country, no flag, no government, no constitution, no laws, no institutions, no religion, no God, that I can call my own.

I am not a man of peace. I am a man of war. I am a man of blood.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.

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

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

The American people have always been able to find a way to do what they wanted to do.

The true remedy for all the ills of society is not to be found in the suppression of thought, but in the free and open discussion of all questions.

A man's rights are not to be determined by the color of his skin, or by the texture of his hair.

I have ever felt that the best way to abolish slavery is to make the slave a free man.

The American people have this to learn, that 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.

We are not to be saved by the grace of God, but by the grace of man.

I am a man, and therefore interested in all that concerns men.

The freedom of any one class of people is not secure until the freedom of all classes of people is secure.

The true object of government is to protect the weak against the strong.

The best defense of liberty is the constant assertion of its principles.

The ballot is the only safeguard of our liberties.