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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.

Frederick Douglass

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Frederick Douglass
Age: 77 †
Born: 1818
Born: February 14
Died: 1895
Died: February 20
Abolitionist
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Talbot County
Maryland
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
Frederick Augustus Washington Baly
Fred Bailey
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Suppress
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More quotes by Frederick Douglass

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Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.
Frederick Douglass
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You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.
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I love the religion of Christianity - which cometh from above - which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy.
Frederick Douglass
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Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.
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Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
Frederick Douglass
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We are free to say that in respect to political rights, we hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for men.
Frederick Douglass
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I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
Frederick Douglass
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Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.
Frederick Douglass
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Everybody has asked the question . . . 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!
Frederick Douglass
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Let us render the tyrant no aid.
Frederick Douglass
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If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.
Frederick Douglass
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Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character.
Frederick Douglass
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You have to take power. No one gives it.
Frederick Douglass
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It was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.
Frederick Douglass
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In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world.
Frederick Douglass
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Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever... I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
Frederick Douglass
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...I recognize the widest possible difference-so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other.
Frederick Douglass
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Vainly you talk about voting it down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing but God's truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral sentiment.
Frederick Douglass
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American labor rights activist, on activities of the National Farm Workers Association Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but human practice may.
Frederick Douglass
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[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