If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
AUTHOR QUOTES
Quotes by Frederick Douglass
Explore 25 verified and sourced quotes attributed to Frederick Douglass. Open any quote for its dedicated page, source details and related topics.
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Selected quotes by Frederick Douglass
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.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
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.
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.
People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
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.
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.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.
I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
One and God make a majority.
America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.
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