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

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
Present
Future
Past
Make
Heartbroken
Useful
Meaningful

More quotes by Frederick Douglass

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Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.
Frederick Douglass
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You have to take power. No one gives it.
Frederick Douglass
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Right is of no sex, truth is of no color.
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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As those who believe in the visibility of ghosts can easily see them, so it is always easy to see repulsive qualities in those we despise and hate.
Frederick Douglass
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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.
Frederick Douglass
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The ballot is the only safety.
Frederick Douglass
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When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.
Frederick Douglass
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Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people.
Frederick Douglass
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A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.
Frederick Douglass
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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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... and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty.
Frederick Douglass
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It is the mission of the printer to diffuse light and knowledge by a judicious intermingling of black with white.
Frederick Douglass
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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.
Frederick Douglass
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Be not discouraged. There is a future for you. . . . The resistance encountered now predicates hope. . .
Frederick Douglass
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Without Struggle There Is No Success
Frederick Douglass
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Neither we, nor any other people, will ever be respected till we respect ourselves and we will never respect ourselves till we have the means to live respectfully.
Frederick Douglass
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I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored mans cause than those of the Democratic party.
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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When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world.
Frederick Douglass