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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

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

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Right is of no sex, truth is of no color.
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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I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
Frederick Douglass
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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.
Frederick Douglass
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Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
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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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 are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.
Frederick Douglass
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Money is the measure of morality, and the success or failure of slavery as a money-making system, determines with many whether...it should be maintained or abolished.
Frederick Douglass
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You have to take power. No one gives it.
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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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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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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Mr. Lincoln was not only a great President, but a great man - too great to be small in anything. In his company I was never in any way reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color.
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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Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.
Frederick Douglass
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Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere
Frederick Douglass
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...I recognize the widest possible difference-so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other.
Frederick Douglass
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He who is whipped oftenest, is whipped easiest.
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