Frederick Douglass

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

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.

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

What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?

I have no love for America, as such. I have no patriotism. I have no country. I have no flag. I have nothing to be proud of in this country.

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

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

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

I have always been more deeply interested in the welfare of the colored people than in any merely personal matter.

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

I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any record containing it.

I would rather be a slave in form than in fact.

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.

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

I did not run away from the South, I ran away from slavery.

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

The man who has suffered the wrong is the man to demand the right.

A man's rights are not to be determined by the color of his skin, or in any other way than by the measure of his manhood.

The American people have always been a patient people; but there is a limit to the endurance of every people.

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.