Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Frederick Douglass (American Abolitionist)

Frederick Douglass (1817–95,) born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was an American abolitionist and writer. An escaped slave, he rose through the brutalities of slavery to become the most prominent African American leader, intellectual, and orator of the nineteenth century. His autobiographical narrative remains one of the foremost documents in America’s literary and political history.

Born into slavery on a farm in Maryland, Douglass lived for twenty years as a slave. He escaped from slavery in 1838 and lived as a fugitive for nine years. He joined the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and established the anti-slavery newspaper North Star.

Douglass gained renown for Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845,) his autobiographical account of his upbringing in slavery and his escape. The haunting descriptions of the beatings that Douglas suffered and the cruel humiliations that he endured remain to this day the most memorable and moving accounts of the crime of slavery.

Douglass became a leading activist in the struggle for abolition and black civil rights. He was an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln and lived to see the emancipation of the slaves during the Civil War.

Douglass also wrote My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Frederick Douglass

I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored mans cause than those of the Democratic party.
Frederick Douglass

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.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Self Respect, Self-respect

I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored mans political hopes and the ark of his safety.
Frederick Douglass

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Past, Reflection, The Past

He who would be free must strike the first blow.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Defense

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.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Justice, Oppression, Society, Poverty

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.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Freedom

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Learning

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.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Battle

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Work

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.
Frederick Douglass

The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Racism

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

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Self Respect, Self-respect

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Courage

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.
Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass

Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Right, Rightness

One and God make a majority.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: God

I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Welfare

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.
Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle there is no progress. 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. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Frederick Douglass
Topics: Action, Progress, Diplomacy

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