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Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.

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
Forever
Reading
Free
Read
Learn
Book
Literacy
Importance

More quotes by Frederick Douglass

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I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity…a shelter under…which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection
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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Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.
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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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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My hopes were never brighter than now.
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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In life you don't get everything you pay for, but you must pay for everything you get.
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.
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.
Frederick Douglass
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Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place.
Frederick Douglass
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He who is whipped oftenest, is whipped easiest.
Frederick Douglass
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Once you read, you will be free forever.
Frederick Douglass
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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.
Frederick Douglass
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Men of Color, To Arms! The case is before you. This is our golden opportunity. Let us accept it, and forever wipe out the dark reproaches unsparingly hurled against us by our enemies. Let us win for ourselves the gratitude of our country, and the best blessings of our posterity through all time.
Frederick Douglass
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Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Better even to die free than to live slaves.
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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If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass
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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.
Frederick Douglass
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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.
Frederick Douglass