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He who would be free must strike the first blow.

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
Strikes
Blow
Revolution
Free
Firsts
First
Must
Would
Strike

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This war, disguise it as they may, is virtually nothing more or less than perpetual slavery against universal freedoms.
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Oppression makes a wise man mad.
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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.
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The District of Columbia is the one spot where there is no government for the people, of the people and by the people.
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To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
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Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.
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Let us render the tyrant no aid.
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Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.
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The opposite of compromise is character.
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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 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.
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I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
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If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.
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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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From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen.
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What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.
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Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Better even to die free than to live slaves.
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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.
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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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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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