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.

— Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass Quotes

Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people.

— Frederick Douglass

Our destiny is largely in our hands.

— Frederick Douglass

The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a future too, with hope in it. The desire to be free, awakened my determination to act, to think, and to SPEAK.

— Frederick Douglass

It is better to be part of a great whole than to be the whole of a small part.

— Frederick Douglass

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

— Frederick Douglass

There are at present many Coloured men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and labourers, but real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets.

— Frederick Douglass
Real

The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.

— Frederick Douglass

I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of increasing my contentment; it only increased my desire to be free, and set me thinking of plans to gain my freedom.

— Frederick Douglass

Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.

— Frederick Douglass
About Greed

Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man.

— Frederick Douglass

Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine.

— Frederick Douglass

Experience proves that those are oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.

— Frederick Douglass

In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.

— Frederick Douglass

From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen.

— Frederick Douglass
Firsts

This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

— Frederick Douglass

Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.

— Frederick Douglass
Firsts

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

— Frederick Douglass

Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.

— Frederick Douglass

A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

— Frederick Douglass

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.

— Frederick Douglass
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