Top 70 Greatest Frederick Douglass Quotes Of All Time

Looking for the best and inspirational Frederick Douglass quotes?

Frederick Douglass was a renowned American abolitionist, civil rights activist, orator, writer, and statesman. He joined African Americans in the fight against slavery in America. After his release, he traveled to Great Britain, where he made a speech that became influential in the British public.

He was born into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey but was given his father’s name by his master. He escaped in 1838 and became a self-taught writer and speaker, recorder, and agitator for abolitionism in North America and equality worldwide.

He is regarded as one of the most influential African Americans of all time and one of the essential abolitionists with several notable achievements. He helped establish new colonies for freed slaves in Sierra Leone, including a society based on cooperative economics with equality among races and genders.

Frederick Douglass eventually became a crucial figure in the abolitionist movement during the American Civil War when he wrote several letters to President Abraham Lincoln asking for his African American Union Army support. He was adamant that people should not be limited to their racial backgrounds when it comes to pursuing freedom and equality; throughout his life, he refused to be defined by just his blackness and as an American who fought for justice through activism.

Check out his inspirational quotes and help you reflect on who you are and what you want to achieve in your life.

Top 70 Greatest Frederick Douglass Quotes

“Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.”

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

“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.“

“You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.”

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

“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”

“Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.“

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.“

“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.“

“A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.“

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

“Whatever delays, disappointments and discouragements may come, truth, justice, liberty and humanity will prevail.”

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

“A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnanimity.”

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

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

“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.”

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.“

“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.“

“A smile or a tear has no nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man.“

“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

“The binding quality of law is its reasonableness.”

“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.“

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

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

“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.”

“Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.“

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

“The destiny of the colored American … is the destiny of America.”

“The man who is right is a majority. He who has God and conscience on his side, has a majority against the universe.”

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

“Some know the value of education by having it. I know its value by not having it.”

“A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.”

“Our destiny is largely in our hands.”

“My hopes were never brighter than now.”

“The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.”

“The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.“

“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.“

“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.“

“The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.”

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

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

“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.”

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

“Experience is a keen teacher;”

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

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

“Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.”

“Nothing valuable shall be obtained without labor and agony.”

“Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Man’s own greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.”

“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.”

“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.“

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

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

“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.“

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

“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.“

“A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.”

“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man, not a gentleman can insult me.”

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”

“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”

“Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the

“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

“The soul that is within me no man can degrade.”

“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.“

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