45 Frederick Douglass Quotes To Celebrate His Incredible Legacy

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was an abolitionist, social reformer, orator, writer and statesman who successfully escaped slavery in 1838. He became a powerful and prominent figure in the abolitionist movement—gaining notoriety as a speaker and writer, sharing his personal experiences and exposing the inhumanities of slavery. 

He spoke the famous quote, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress," among many other quotes of wisdom regarding slavery, freedom, progress and politics. Douglass passed in 1895, but his life and work played a significant role in shaping the discourse on slavery, freedom and civil rights in the United States.

Honor his legacy with 45 Frederick Douglass quotes to inspire you and make you think. All of his words are guaranteed to pack a punch of truthful power. From important lines about free speech and moral growth to powerful statements about rebellion and slavery, read on.

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45 Frederick Douglass Quotes

1. "If there is no struggle, there is no progress."

2. "The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes the rebellion." 

3. "I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."

4. "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."

5. "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." 

6. "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." 

7. "Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." 

8. "The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery."

9. "The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."

10. "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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11. "A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box."

12. "One and God make a majority."

13. "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."

14. "Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

15. "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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16. "I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."

17. "I did not know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted."

18. "Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere."

19. "You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed."

20. "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man."

21. "Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free."

22. "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

23. "Some know the value of education by having it. I know its value by not having it."

24. "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."

25. "Our destiny is largely in our hands."

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26. "The soul that is within me no man can degrade."

27. "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."

28. "A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from form and color of things about him."

29. "There is not a man beneath the canopy of Heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him."

30. "Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude."

31. "A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people."

32. "Experience is a keen teacher."

33. "A man is worked on by what he works on."

34. "At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed."

35. "People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get."

36. "For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage."

37. "For no man who lives at all lives unto himself. He either helps or hinders all who are in anywise connected to him."

38. "No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck."

39. "Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground."

40. "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future."

41. "The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

42. "Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done."

43. "Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave."

44. "Abolition of slavery had been the deepest desire and the great labor of my life."

45. "It is not light we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake."

Next: 55 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes