Quotes from Frederick Douglass

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.

As a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor.

Once you learn to read, you will forever be free.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppos

He who would be free must strike the first blow.

Geological trees do not flourish among slaves.

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

Behold your hard hands and your strong frames, your masters and mistresses have soft hands and delicate constitutions, and white skins; whence this difference; 'it is the Lord's doings and marvellous in our eyes.

I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.

We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

Col. Lloyd's plantation resembles what the baronial domains were during the middle ages in Europe. Grim, cold, and unapproachable by all genial influences from communities without, there it stands; full three hundred years behind the age