Frederick Douglass Quotes About Liberty

Quotes about: Liberty

• Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

  Frederick Douglass

  Freedom, Power, Tyrants

  Speech, Canandaigua, N.Y., 4 Aug. 1857

• Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

  Frederick Douglass

  Freedom, Rights, Tyrants

  Frederick Douglass (2013). “Selected Addresses of Frederick Douglass”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

• Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Rights, Tyrants

  Frederick Douglass (2017). “Frederick Douglass: 100 Quotes on Bondage, Perseverance, and Redemption”

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

  Frederick Douglass

  Freedom, Patriotic, Men

  Speech, Canandaigua, N.Y., 4 Aug. 1857

• Your national greatness, swelling vanity; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

  Frederick Douglass

  Religious, Prayer, Greatness

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

• 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.

  Frederick Douglass

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Patriotic

  Speech at Civil Rights Mass Meeting,Washington, D.C., 22 Oct. 1883

• Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

  Frederick Douglass

  Wisdom, Freedom, Men

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

  Frederick Douglass

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Tyrants

  Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner, Yuval Taylor (1999). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.367, Chicago Review Press

• In a composite Nation like ours, made up of almost every variety of the human family, there should be, as before the Law, no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no black, no white, but one country, one citizenship equal rights and a common destiny for all.
  A government that cannot or does not protect the humblest citizen in his right to life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, should be reformed or overthrown, without delay.

  Frederick Douglass

  Country, Pursuit Of Happiness, Equality

• I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.

  Frederick Douglass

  Trust, Government, Class

  Frederick Douglass (1994). “Autobiographies”, p.815, Library of America

• The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

  Frederick Douglass

  Honesty, Integrity, War

  Speech on the twenty-third anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia,Washington, D.C., Apr. 1885

• The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied it's privileges by the law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of it's humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?

  Frederick Douglass

  Love, America, Law

• Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.

  Frederick Douglass

  Uplifting, Mean, Men

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches”, p.355, Hackett Publishing

• The Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider it purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? it is neither.

  Frederick Douglass

  Liberty, Purpose, Slavery

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

• The Constitutional framers were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Justice, Peaceful

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document!

  Frederick Douglass

  Liberty, Constitution, Glorious

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

• Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress.

  Frederick Douglass

  Philosophy, Struggle, August

  Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner, Yuval Taylor (1999). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.367, Chicago Review Press

• What is possible for me is possible for you.

  Frederick Douglass

  Black History, Liberty

• I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine.

  Frederick Douglass

  Father, Distance, Healing

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

• One by one I have seen obstacles removed, errors corrected, prejudices softened, proscriptions relinquished, and my people advancing in all the elements that go to make up the sum of the general welfare. And I remember that God reigns in eternity, and that whatever delays, whatever disappointments and discouragements may come, truth, justice, liberty and humanity will ultimately prevail.

  Frederick Douglass

  Disappointment, Errors, People

• I ask you...to adopt the principles proclaimed by yourselves, by your revolutionary fathers, and by the old bell in Independence Hall.

  Frederick Douglass

  Freedom, Father, Independence

• No people to whom liberty is given can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant.

  Frederick Douglass

  Hands, Tyrants, Iron

  Frederick Douglass (2012). “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”, p.447, Courier Corporation

• Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither.

  Frederick Douglass

  Liberty, Purpose, Slavery

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty

  Frederick Douglass

  Mean, Men, Hands

  Frederick Douglass (2012). “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”, p.274, Courier Corporation

• ... and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty.

  Frederick Douglass

  Thinking, Liberty

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, p.159, Frederick Douglass

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