"Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it."
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Frederick Douglass quotes (page 6 of 12)
232 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"[...] endless action and reaction. Those beautifully rounded pebbles which you gather on the sand and which you hold in your hand and marvel at their exceeding smoothness, were chiseled into their varies and graceful forms by the ceaseless action of countless waves. Nature is herself a great worker and never tolerates, without certain rebuke, any contradiction to her wise example. Inaction is followed by stagnation. Stagnation is followed by pestilence and pestilence is followed by death."
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"A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it."
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"A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country."
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"...there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate Army...as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government...There were such soldiers at Manassas and they are probably there still."
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"In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny."
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"The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve."
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"...I recognize the widest possible difference-so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other."
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"Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave."
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"I do not think much of the good luck theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value."
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"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"
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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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"I hear the mournful wail of millions!"
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"Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man."
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"We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!!"
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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."
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"In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice."
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"Let us render the tyrant no aid."
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"I recognize the Republican Party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety."
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"It's a poor rule that won't work both ways."
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