Frederick Douglass

“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.”

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

“America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.”

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

“One and God make a majority.”

“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.”

“The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.”