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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

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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
Whether
Maintained
Success
Determines
Measure
Making
Determine
Money
Slavery
Many
Morality
Failure
System
Abolished

More quotes by 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.
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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
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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.
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I escaped from slavery and became a leading abolitionist and speaker.
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I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
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The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people.
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When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.
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You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.
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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.
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The destiny of the colored American ... is the destiny of America.
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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.
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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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Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
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Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
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Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Better even to die free than to live slaves.
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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
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We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
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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.
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I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.
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You have to take power. No one gives it.
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