Frederick Douglass Quotes - Page 4

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• There is a class of people who seem to think that if a man should fall overboard into the sea with a Bible in his pocket it would hardly be possible to drown. I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

  Frederick Douglass

  Fall, Men, Thinking

  79 Copy quote

• The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people.

  Frederick Douglass

  America, People, President

  "The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery?" by Frederick Douglass, March 26, 1860.

  19 Copy quote

• In the struggle for justice, the only reward is the opportunity to be in the struggle. You can't expect that you're going to have it tomorrow. You just have to keep working on it.

  Frederick Douglass

  Struggle, Opportunity, Justice

  25 Copy quote

• We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans.

  Frederick Douglass

  War, Fall, History

  43 Copy quote

• The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors.... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!

  Frederick Douglass

  Country, Writing, Names

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  38 Copy quote

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

  Frederick Douglass

  Religious, Atheist, Prayer

  31 Copy quote

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

  Frederick Douglass

  Heartbroken, Letting Go, Meaningful

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  31 Copy quote

• Liberty for all; chains for none.

  Frederick Douglass

  Liberty, Chains

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “The Portable Frederick Douglass”, p.344, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• Once you read, you will be free forever.

  Frederick Douglass

  Forever, Library

  10 Copy quote

• Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.

  Frederick Douglass

  Ignorance, Justice, Black History

  Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia,Washington, D.C., Apr. 1886

  87 Copy quote

• Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Giving, Needs

  Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner, Yuval Taylor (1999). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.536, Chicago Review Press

  10 Copy quote

• In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.

  Frederick Douglass

  Country, Destiny, Rights

  17 Copy quote

• Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all of the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

  Frederick Douglass

  Practice, America, Hypocrisy

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  38 Copy quote

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

  Frederick Douglass

  Irony, Argument, Needed

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  85 Copy quote

• Your national greatness, swelling vanity; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

  Frederick Douglass

  Religious, Prayer, Greatness

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  53 Copy quote

• He who would be free must strike the first blow.

  Frederick Douglass

  Blow, Would Be, Firsts

  30 Copy quote

• The Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider it purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? it is neither.

  Frederick Douglass

  Liberty, Purpose, Slavery

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  19 Copy quote

• Fortune may crowd a man's life with fortunate circumstances and happy opportunities, but they will, as we all know, avail him nothing unless he makes a wise and vigorous use of them.

  Frederick Douglass

  Wise, Men, Opportunity

  27 Copy quote

• The man who is right is a majority. He who has God and conscience on his side, has a majority against the universe.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Majority, Sides

  Speech to National Free Soil Convention, Pittsburgh, Pa., 11 Aug. 1852 See Coolidge 2; Andrew Jackson 7; John Knox 1; Wendell Phillips 3; Thoreau 9

  11 Copy quote
• 

  There are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers , but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels.

  Frederick Douglass

  Real, War, Army

  "The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass: The Civil War, 1861-1865".

  21 Copy quote

• [...] allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put[...] There is no royal road to perfection.

  Frederick Douglass

  Heart, Opportunity, Perfection

  33 Copy quote

• You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Black History, African American

  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass ch. 10 (1845)

  24 Copy quote

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

  Frederick Douglass

  Party, Men, Anchors

  Frederick Douglass' letter to men from Petersburg, Virginia (in the Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress), August 15, 1888.

  13 Copy quote

• Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

  Frederick Douglass

  Reading, Hands, Principles

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  57 Copy quote

• Let us render the tyrant no aid.

  Frederick Douglass

  Tyrants, Aids

  Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison (1849). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”, p.102

  14 Copy quote

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