Best Frederick Douglass Quotes

Frederick Douglass Quotes About Education, Slavery, Freedom, America, Reading, Equality, Lincoln, Power Concedes, With page Numbers, Life & Success! Frederick Douglass was a leading abolitionist, an advocate for women’s rights, and the author of the acclaimed biography, ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass’. In Talbot County, Maryland, Frederick Douglass was born into slavery around 1818. During his childhood, Douglass was sent to live with the plantation owners, one of whom may be his father. Without Auld’s lessons, Douglass learned from white kids and neighbours.

Douglass came to understand his opposition to slavery through reading. In response to his newly gained knowledge, Douglass shared it with his fellow slaves. As a result of moving between the Aulds, Douglass was forced to work for Edward Covey, a “slave breaker. He met Anna Murray, a slave-free Black woman, and married her on September 15, 1838.

Douglass’ strength and rhetorical skills impressed the founder of The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison, and he wrote about him in his newspaper. In 1845, Douglass published his first autobiography and fled overseas to evade recapture. While Douglass lived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he attended abolitionist meetings regularly.

Besides The Liberator, he also subscribed to Garrison’s paper. As a result of Garrison’s encouragement, Douglass wrote and published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an enslaved American, in 1845. There were several translations of the book into European languages, and it was a bestseller in the United States. In his lifetime, Douglass revised and expanded his autobiography three times. Furthermore, Douglass was an outspoken advocate for women’s rights and abolition. He was the only African American during the Seneca Falls convention for women’s rights in 1848. After returning from Washington, D.C., Douglass died of a massive heart attack or stroke on February 20, 1895.

Best Frederick Douglass Quotes

1. “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” – Frederick Douglass

2. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” – Frederick Douglass

3. “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” –Frederick Douglass

4. “Some know the value of education by having it. I know its value by not having it.” – Frederick Douglass

5. “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.” – Frederick Douglass

6. “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”- Frederick Douglass

7. “The soul that is within me no man can degrade.” – Frederick Douglass

8. “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.” – Frederick Douglass

9. “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” ― Frederick Douglass

10. “The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.” – Frederick Douglass

11. “I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.” – Frederick Douglass

12. “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

13. “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” – Frederick Douglass

14. “Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.” – Frederick Douglass

15. “What to the Slave is the 4th of July.” – Frederick Douglass

16. “There is not a man beneath the canopy of Heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.” – Frederick Douglass

17. “Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.” – Frederick Douglass

18. “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

19. “A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnamity.” – Frederick Douglass

20. “What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.” – Frederick Douglass

21. “I should esteem it a privilege to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other. I am your fellow-man, but not your slave.” – Frederick Douglass

22. “The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.” – Frederick Douglass

23. “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

24. “A smile or a tear has not nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man.” – Frederick Douglass

25. “The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.” – Frederick Douglass

26. “The destiny of the colored American … is the destiny of America.” ― Frederick Douglass

27. “We succeed, not alone by the laborious exertions of our faculties, be they small or great, but by the regular, thoughtful and systematic exercise of them.” ― Frederick Douglass

28. “Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.” ― Frederick Douglass

29. “A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.” ― Frederick Douglass

30. “Our destiny is largely in our hands.” ― Frederick Douglass