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Frederick Douglass Quotes

Total quotes: 19
“A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.”
— Frederick Douglass
Tagged: rights, voting, Suffrage, Ballot Box, Jury Box, Guns, Second Amendment
“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
Tagged: Slavery, Culpability
“I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse.”
— Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass : Autobiographies : Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave / My Bondage and My Freedom / Life and Times of Frederick Douglass(Library of America)
Tagged: Republicans, Democrats
“The man who is right is a majority. We, who have God and conscience on our side, have a majority against the universe.”
— Frederick Douglass
Tagged: Right, Majority, God, Conscience
“Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. It was very present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.”
— Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Tagged: Freedom, Slavery
“A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnanimity.”
— Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass : Autobiographies : Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave / My Bondage and My Freedom / Life and Times of Frederick Douglass(Library of America)
Tagged: Slavery, Bloodline, Magnanimity, Reliable
“A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.”
— Frederick Douglass, The Portable Frederick Douglass(Penguin Classics)
Tagged: Work, Circumstances, Fate, Hard Work, Self-Determination
“I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this event as a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But I should be false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.”
— Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Tagged: Superstitious, Abhorrence, Providence, Slavery, God
“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hatethe corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.”
— Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave & Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl(Modern Library Classics)
Tagged: Christianity, Slavery, Hypocrisy, Fraud
“I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, - a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, - a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, - and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of the slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.”
— Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Tagged: Slavery, Christianity, Hypocrisy, American South
“It is now pretty well established, that there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels.…That the Negroes are numerous in the rebel army, and do for that army its heaviest work, is beyond question.”
— Frederick Douglass
Tagged: Civil War, Black Confederates, HIdden History
“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, Frederick Douglass : Autobiographies : Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave / My Bondage and My Freedom / Life and Times of Frederick Douglass(Library of America)
Tagged: Marriage, Slavery, Christianity
“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. in moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.”
— Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Tagged: Slavery, Torture, Africa, Hatred, Freedom
“Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.”
— Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Tagged: Slavery, Slave Songs, Sorry
“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, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Tagged: Slavery, Moral, Dehumanization, Submission
“In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky — her grand old woods — her fertile fields — her beautiful rivers — her mighty lakes, and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked, my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal actions of slaveholding, robbery and wrong, — when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.”
— Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings(The Library of Black America series)
Tagged: America, Slavery, Loathing
“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
— Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass : Autobiographies : Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave / My Bondage and My Freedom / Life and Times of Frederick Douglass(Library of America)
Tagged: Freedom, Slavery, prayer, Action
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
— Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings(The Library of Black America series)
Tagged: Power
“It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
— Frederick Douglass, Family of abolitionist Frederick Douglass continues his legacy
Tagged: Children, Men, humans, Building Communities, Building A Future, Society, World, Experience, Life, surviving
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