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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose."

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

"What to the Slave is the 4th of July."

"I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave."

"Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people."

"One and God make a majority."

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

"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."