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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
Library
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More quotes by 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.
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.
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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Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character.
Frederick Douglass
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Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not liked, either by masters or overseers.
Frederick Douglass
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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.
Frederick Douglass
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The opposite of compromise is character.
Frederick Douglass
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In life you don't get everything you pay for, but you must pay for everything you get.
Frederick Douglass
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Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.
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.
Frederick Douglass
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Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
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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Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.
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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I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored mans cause than those of the Democratic party.
Frederick Douglass
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I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.
Frederick Douglass
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If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass
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A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
Frederick Douglass
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You have to take power. No one gives it.
Frederick Douglass
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Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.
Frederick Douglass