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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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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
Ever
Live
Respectfully
Mean
Respected
Never
Till
People
Ethics
Neither
Respect
Means

More quotes by Frederick Douglass

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Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.
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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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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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Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it.
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The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a future too, with hope in it. The desire to be free, awakened my determination to act, to think, and to SPEAK.
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The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
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.
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It was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.
Frederick Douglass
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In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.
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... and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty.
Frederick Douglass
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Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.
Frederick Douglass
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Let us render the tyrant no aid.
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
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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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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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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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Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.
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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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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You have to take power. No one gives it.
Frederick Douglass