Quote

You have to take power. No one gives it.

Frederick Douglass

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

Image
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
Image
No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty
Frederick Douglass
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I recognize the Republican Party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.
Frederick Douglass
Image
Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.
Frederick Douglass
Image
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
Image
Without Struggle There Is No Success
Frederick Douglass
Image
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
Image
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
Frederick Douglass
Image
Let us render the tyrant no aid.
Frederick Douglass
Image
Money is the measure of morality, and the success or failure of slavery as a money-making system, determines with many whether...it should be maintained or abolished.
Frederick Douglass
Image
Oppression makes a wise man mad.
Frederick Douglass
Image
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass
Image
Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.
Frederick Douglass
Image
Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.
Frederick Douglass
Image
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Better even to die free than to live slaves.
Frederick Douglass
Image
[...] allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put[...] There is no royal road to perfection.
Frederick Douglass
Image
A government, founded on impartial liberty, where all have a voice and a vote, irrespective of color or of sex--what is there to hinder such a government from standing firm.
Frederick Douglass
Image
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