Frederick Douglass quotes. Frederick Douglass was a slave when he was born in Talbot County, Maryland, possibly around 1818. One of the most well-known intellectuals of his era, he lectured to large crowds and advised presidents on a variety of issues, including women’s rights and Irish home rule.
Douglass learned to read and write in the home of Hugh Auld with the wife aiding in teaching alphabets. Douglass’ intellectual resistance to slavery took shape while he was reading. He devoured newspapers and read as much political literature and writing as he could. Douglass later thanked The Columbian Orator with helping him define and clarify his human rights beliefs.
Abolitionist Fredrick Douglass became a regular anti-slavery lecturer. William Lloyd Garrison, the creator of the weekly journal The Liberator, was moved by Douglass’ fortitude and rhetorical prowess and included him in his publication. The North Star, Frederick Douglass Weekly, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, Douglass’ Monthly, and New National Era are some of the abolitionist publications that Douglass published. Douglass became a vocal defender of women’s rights in addition to abolition.
He was the sole Black American present in the Seneca Falls assembly on women’s rights in 1848. But Douglass stood and passionately advocated for it, saying that he could not accept the right to vote as a Black man if women were not also allowed to exercise that privilege. The motion was approved.
Amidst all the despise and struggling to succeed in proving his ideas on rights, he exhibited bravery, eloquence and power. This article has compiled some motivational quotes to inspire individuals to take up their potentials and make it proven right no matter the circumstances they find themselves.
Read some Frederick Douglass quotes below.
Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.
No man can put a chain around the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them
A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.
I had as well be killed running as die standing.
Once you learn to read you will be forever free.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnanimity.
Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
My hopes were never brighter than now.
Our destiny is largely in our hands.
The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve
I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.
A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.
One and God make a majority.
I had a wholesome dread of the consequences of running in debt.
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
Experience is a keen teacher;
Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency;
Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
Alas! I had not then learned the measure of “man’s inhumanity to man,” nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain.
Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.
Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.
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