Quotes from Frederick Douglass

I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant, but may my "right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.

Once you learn to read, you'll be forever free. Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion—a pious soul—a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a nigger-breaker.

I was suddenly and sharply interrupted by my good old friend Sojourner Truth with a question, Frederick, is God dead? No, I answered, and because God is not dead slavery can only end in blood.

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

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.

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

Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.

The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.

Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.

That which is inhuman cannot be divine.

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