Quotes by Frederick Douglass

About Frederick Douglass:

Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, 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 writings. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Even many Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liber...

Frederick Douglass

Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.

Frederick Douglass

Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren

Frederick Douglass

Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did no...

Frederick Douglass

Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on...

Frederick Douglass

The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clott...

Frederick Douglass

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

Frederick Douglass

[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, br...

Frederick Douglass

They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family.

Frederick Douglass

I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It ...

Frederick Douglass

A smile or a tear has not nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man

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 roar o...

Frederick Douglass

[...] allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into whi...

Frederick Douglass

[...] endless action and reaction. Those beautifully rounded pebbles which you gather on the sand and which you hold in your hand and marvel at their exceeding smoothness, were chiseled into their varies and graceful forms by the ceaseless action of ...

Frederick Douglass

From apparently the basest metals we have the finest toned bells.

Frederick Douglass

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

Frederick Douglass

Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency;

Frederick Douglass

My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!

Frederick Douglass

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

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

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

Frederick Douglass

Author Bio

  • NameFrederick Douglass
  • DescriptionAmerican social reformer, orator, writer and statesman
  • AliasesFrederick Augustus Washington Bailey
  • BornFebruary, 1818
  • DiedFebruary 20, 1895
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist; Diplomat; Writer; Autobiographer