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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
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Frederick Douglass
Age: 77 †
Born: 1818
Born: February 14
Died: 1895
Died: February 20
Abolitionist
Autobiographer
Businessperson
Caulker
Diplomat
Editor
Film Editor
Journalist
Orator
Politician
Suffragist
Writer
Talbot County
Maryland
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
Frederick Augustus Washington Baly
Fred Bailey
Freddie Bailey
Rather
Prefer
Incur
Fear
Rage
Incurring
Others
Acceptance
Abhorrence
True
False
Hazard
Even
Integrity
Hazards
Atheism
Ridicule
Respect
Awakening
Moral
Journalism
Falseness
More quotes by Frederick Douglass
The destiny of the colored American ... is the destiny of America.
Frederick Douglass
Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place.
Frederick Douglass
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
Frederick Douglass
I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.
Frederick Douglass
Oppression makes a wise man mad.
Frederick Douglass
No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty
Frederick Douglass
[John Brown's] zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun... I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave.
Frederick Douglass
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
Frederick Douglass
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
Frederick Douglass
What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.
Frederick Douglass
To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.
Frederick Douglass
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
Frederick Douglass
Once you read, you will be free forever.
Frederick Douglass
Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.
Frederick Douglass
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass
I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.
Frederick Douglass
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
I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity…a shelter under…which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection
Frederick Douglass
I have no protection at home, or resting place abroad. ... I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my birth. I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were.
Frederick Douglass
I ask you...to adopt the principles proclaimed by yourselves, by your revolutionary fathers, and by the old bell in Independence Hall.
Frederick Douglass