Frederick Douglass Quotes
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If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
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Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, '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.
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The man who is right is a majority. We, who have God and conscience on our side, have a majority against the universe.
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One and God make a majority.
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The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve.
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America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
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People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
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I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.
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Slavery has left behind it a spirit that still delights in human blood. Outrage, murder, and assassination are the inheritance of the freed men and women of the South. Neither our government nor our civilization seems able to stop the flow of blood. As in the time of slavery, the Church is silent.
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I believe in individuality, but individuals are, to the mass, like waves to the ocean. The highest order of genius is as dependent as is the lowest.
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A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.
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Detraction paves the way for the very perfections which it doubts and denies.
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Shoot down the Confederacy and uphold the flag; the American flag.
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Despite of it all, the Negro remains … cool, strong, imperturbable, and cheerful.
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What to the Slave is the 4th of July.
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A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.
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The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
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The Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color.
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The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
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It is quite impossible, at this early date, to say with any decided emphasis what the future of the colored people will be. Speculations of that kind, thus far, have only reflected the mental bias and education of the many who have essayed to solve the problem.
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There is no race problem before the country, but only a political one, the question whether a Republican has any right to exist south of Mason and Dixon's line.
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Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave spirits, reached, in their glorious career that last highest point of nobleness beyond which human power cannot go. They died for their country.
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The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed.
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Jefferson was not ashamed to call the black man his brother and to address him as a gentleman.