Frederick Douglass

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

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

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.

When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.

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.

One and God make a majority.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

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

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.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.