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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.

Frederick Douglass

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Frederick Douglass
Age: 77 †
Born: 1818
Born: February 14
Died: 1895
Died: February 20
Abolitionist
Autobiographer
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Caulker
Diplomat
Editor
Film Editor
Journalist
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Politician
Suffragist
Writer
Talbot County
Maryland
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
Frederick Augustus Washington Baly
Fred Bailey
Freddie Bailey
Citizens
Conditions
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Bettering
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Condition
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More quotes by Frederick Douglass

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Vainly you talk about voting it down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing but God's truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral sentiment.
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American labor rights activist, on activities of the National Farm Workers Association Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but human practice may.
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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Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
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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This war, disguise it as they may, is virtually nothing more or less than perpetual slavery against universal freedoms.
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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Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.
Frederick Douglass
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I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
Frederick Douglass
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There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution
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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Our destiny is largely in our hands.
Frederick Douglass
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The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected.
Frederick Douglass
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Men of Color, To Arms! The case is before you. This is our golden opportunity. Let us accept it, and forever wipe out the dark reproaches unsparingly hurled against us by our enemies. Let us win for ourselves the gratitude of our country, and the best blessings of our posterity through all time.
Frederick Douglass
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Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.
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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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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He who is whipped oftenest, is whipped easiest.
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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Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.
Frederick Douglass