A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.
One and God make a majority.
This war, disguise it as they may, is virtually nothing more or less than perpetual slavery against universal freedoms.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
What to the Slave is the 4th of July.
I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.
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.
For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
What is possible for me is possible for you.
I do not think much of the good luck theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value.
A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.
Right is of no Sex-Truth is of no Color-God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.
Educate your sons and daughters, send them to school, and show them that beside the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the jury box, you also have the knowledge box.
If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.
A man without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him.
The more men you make free, the more freedom is strengthened, and the more men you give an interest in the welfare and safety of the State, the greater is the security of the State.
When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.