Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
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.
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
I had as well be killed running as die standing.
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.
The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart.
A man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the produce of sugar, – and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women, – before he is ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.
But I should be false in the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.
People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
There is a class of people who seem to think that if a man should fall overboard into the sea with a Bible in his pocket it would hardly be possible to drown. I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
Mr. Lincoln was not only a great President, but a great man – too great to be small in anything. In his company I was never in any way reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color.
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.
When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.
A slave is someone who sits down, and waits for someone to free them.