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Knowledge makes a man unfit to be 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
Knowledge
Freedom
Makes
Abolitionist
Men
Unfit
Tyranny
Slave
Liberty
Wisdom

More quotes by 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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Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.
Frederick Douglass
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Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not liked, either by masters or overseers.
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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The man who will get up will be helped up and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.
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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You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.
Frederick Douglass
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The destiny of the colored American ... is the destiny of America.
Frederick Douglass
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The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.
Frederick Douglass
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The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
Frederick Douglass
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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
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Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.
Frederick Douglass
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It is not light that we need, but fire it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
Frederick Douglass
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Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.
Frederick Douglass
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For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
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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A government, founded on impartial liberty, where all have a voice and a vote, irrespective of color or of sex--what is there to hinder such a government from standing firm.
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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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
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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.
Frederick Douglass