Frederick Douglass Quotes

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

That which is inhuman cannot be divine.

The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.

There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution

I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.

I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.

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.

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

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

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

I will unite with anyone to do good, but with no one to do harm.

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.