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You have to take power. No one gives it.

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
Gives
Power
Take
Giving

More quotes by Frederick Douglass

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Educate your sons and daughters, send them to school, and show them that beside the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the jury box, you also have the knowledge box.
Frederick Douglass
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Right is of no sex, truth is of no color.
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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.
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Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people.
Frederick Douglass
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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.
Frederick Douglass
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It was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.
Frederick Douglass
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The man who will get up will be helped up and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.
Frederick Douglass
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The Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government.
Frederick Douglass
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Let us render the tyrant no aid let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.
Frederick Douglass
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We succeed, not alone by the laborious exertions of our faculties, be they small or great, but by the regular, thoughtful and systematic exercise of them.
Frederick Douglass
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Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.
Frederick Douglass
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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.
Frederick Douglass
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I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
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.
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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You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.
Frederick Douglass
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It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
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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Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.
Frederick Douglass
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It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of slavery. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.
Frederick Douglass