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I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.

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
Slavery
Slave
Couldn
Found
Didn
Wanted
Things

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I ask you...to adopt the principles proclaimed by yourselves, by your revolutionary fathers, and by the old bell in Independence Hall.
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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.
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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.
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Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.
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When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.
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The District of Columbia is the one spot where there is no government for the people, of the people and by the people.
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Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place.
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I escaped from slavery and became a leading abolitionist and speaker.
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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
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It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of slavery. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.
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A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.
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[...] 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.
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To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
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Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.
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Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.
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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.
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A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.
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There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution
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Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
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It's a poor rule that won't work both ways.
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