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[John Brown's] zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun... I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave.

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
Ends
Fight
Slavery
Zeal
Light
Land
Refuse
Infinitely
Government
Causes
Slave
Superior
May
Dies
Mines
Superiors
People
Freedom
Mine
Brown
Force
Sun
Burning
War
Cause
John
Taper
Speak
Events
Logic
Inexorable

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What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.
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Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
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Once you read, you will be free forever.
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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.
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If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.
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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.
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I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity...
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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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I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
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Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.
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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.
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We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
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The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
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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
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Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.
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Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.
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