"No people to whom liberty is given can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant."
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Quote collection
Frederick Douglass quotes (page 4 of 12)
232 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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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"[...] 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."
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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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"Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude."
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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."
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"Be not discouraged. There is a future for you. . . . The resistance encountered now predicates hope. . ."
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"He who would be free must strike the first blow."
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"Oppression makes a wise man mad."
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"I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted."
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"Fortune may crowd a man's life with fortunate circumstances and happy opportunities, but they will, as we all know, avail him nothing unless he makes a wise and vigorous use of them."
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"I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."
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"The opposite of compromise is character."
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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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"If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man."
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"The Constitutional framers were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression."
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"In the struggle for justice, the only reward is the opportunity to be in the struggle. You can't expect that you're going to have it tomorrow. You just have to keep working on it."
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"Neither we, nor any other people, will ever be respected till we respect ourselves and we will never respect ourselves till we have the means to live respectfully."
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"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man."
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"To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker."
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