Frederick Douglass Quotes - Page 3

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• Everybody has asked the question, ... 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! You're doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, ... let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also.

  Frederick Douglass

  Fall, Apples, Tree

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  67 Copy quote

• 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.

  Frederick Douglass

  Humble, Men, Color

  Frederick Douglass (2012). “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”, p.318, Courier Corporation

  85 Copy quote

• The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

  Frederick Douglass

  Life, Being Yourself, Men

  W. E. B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington (2012). “Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, p.48, Courier Corporation

  57 Copy quote

• What is possible for me is possible for you.

  Frederick Douglass

  Black History, Liberty

  42 Copy quote

• Opportunity is important but exertion is indispensable.

  Frederick Douglass

  Opportunity, Important, Self Made

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches”, p.338, Hackett Publishing

  19 Copy quote

• My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work. Whether or not such men have acquired material, moral or intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued, is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success... All human experience proves over and over again, that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud and dishonour, is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Self, Intellectual

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches”, p.344, Hackett Publishing

  57 Copy quote

• I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity...

  Frederick Douglass

  Rights, Race, Humanity

  "Our Composite Nationality". Frederick Douglass' Address in Boston, Massachusetts, teachingamericanhistory.org. December 7, 1869.

  67 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

• If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all the nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples, and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic. The outspread wings of the American eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come.

  Frederick Douglass

  Eagles, Civilization, Wings

  "Our Composite Nationality". Frederick Douglass' Address in Boston, Massachusetts, teachingamericanhistory.org. December 7, 1869.

  72 Copy quote

• You have to take power. No one gives it.

  Frederick Douglass

  Giving

  21 Copy quote

• Be not discouraged. There is a future for you. . . . The resistance encountered now predicates hope. . .

  Frederick Douglass

  Hope, Future, Resistance

  29 Copy quote
• 

  If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

  Frederick Douglass

  Inspirational, Change, Moving On

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

  189 Copy quote

• Our destiny is largely in our hands.

  Frederick Douglass

  Destiny, Hands, Our Destiny

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  42 Copy quote

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

  Frederick Douglass

  Collaboration, Philanthropy, Small Parts

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  39 Copy quote

• 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.

  Frederick Douglass

  Goes On, World, Earth

  Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner, Yuval Taylor (1999). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.710, Chicago Review Press

  55 Copy quote

• One and God make a majority.

  Frederick Douglass

  God, Godly, Majority

  12 Copy quote

• Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it.

  Frederick Douglass

  Value Of Education, Knows, Values

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches”, p.354, Hackett Publishing

  18 Copy quote

• I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Thinking, Vision

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, p.160, Frederick Douglass

  39 Copy quote

• [A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.

  Frederick Douglass

  Spiritual, Men, Air

  Frederick Douglass (2011). “In the Words of Frederick Douglass: Quotations from Liberty’s Champion”, p.237, Cornell University Press

  54 Copy quote

• Oppression makes a wise man mad.

  Frederick Douglass

  Wise, Men, Mad

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

  29 Copy quote

• The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people.

  Frederick Douglass

  America, People, President

  "The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery?" by Frederick Douglass, March 26, 1860.

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Frederick Douglass

  Fire, Light, Earthquakes

  Speech, Rochester, N.Y., 5 July 1852

  83 Copy quote

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