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I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.

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
Across
Toward
Literature
Free
Born
Eastern
Look
Patriotic
Looks
Shore
Men
Slave

More quotes by 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.
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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 had as well be killed running as die standing
Frederick Douglass
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Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.
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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.
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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.
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We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
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I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
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Be not discouraged. There is a future for you. . . . The resistance encountered now predicates hope. . .
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If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
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Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.
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Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
Frederick Douglass
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What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. ... All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... Your interference is doing him positive injury.
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The Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government.
Frederick Douglass
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You have to take power. No one gives it.
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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Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.
Frederick Douglass
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What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.
Frederick Douglass
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The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people.
Frederick Douglass
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Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.
Frederick Douglass