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

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I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.
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A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
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A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.
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You have to take power. No one gives it.
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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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Beat and cuff your slave, keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog. Feed and clothe him well, work him moderately, surround him with physical comfort and dreams of freedom intrude.
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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 have no protection at home, or resting place abroad. ... I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my birth. I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were.
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The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
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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.
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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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Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.
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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.
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Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.
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Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
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I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.
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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.
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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.
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In life you don't get everything you pay for, but you must pay for everything you get.
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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