Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglasswas an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement from Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In his time he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a...
ProfessionAutobiographer
Date of Birth14 February 1818
CityTalbot County, MD
Frederick Douglass quotes about
Liberty for all; chains for none.
Poverty, ignorance and degradation are the combined evils, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of the US.
Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place.
I love the religion of Christianity - which cometh from above - which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy.
The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected.
Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.
From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen.
I will unite with anyone to do good, but with no one to do harm.
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.
This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.
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! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!
I have no protection at home, or resting place abroad. ... I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my birth. I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were.
Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document!
Allow us the dignity to fight for our own freedom