Frederick Douglass Quotes

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.

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

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

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

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

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution

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.

A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

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.