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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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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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Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it.
Frederick Douglass
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Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever... I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
Frederick Douglass
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We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans.
Frederick Douglass
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My hopes were never brighter than now.
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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Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.
Frederick Douglass
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We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
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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Experience proves that those are oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.
Frederick Douglass
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Let us render the tyrant no aid.
Frederick Douglass
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Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Better even to die free than to live slaves.
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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Our destiny is largely in our hands.
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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Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.
Frederick Douglass
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Right is of no sex, truth is of no 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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Beat and cuff your slave, keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog. Feed and clothe him well, work him moderately, surround him with physical comfort and dreams of freedom intrude.
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