Quotes from Frederick Douglass

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

He who would be free must strike the first blow.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppos

I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.

You profess to believe that "of one blood God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth"—and hath commanded all men, everywhere, to love one another—yet you notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred!) all men whose skins are not colored like your own!

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

In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

We Negroes love our country. We fought for it. We ask only that we be treated as well as those who fought against it.

Every tone [of the songs of the slaves] was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

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