Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglasswas an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement from Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In his time he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a...
ProfessionAutobiographer
Date of Birth14 February 1818
CityTalbot County, MD
A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.
It was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.
They who study mankind with a whip in their hands will always go wrong.
In a composite Nation like ours, made up of almost every variety of the human family, there should be, as before the Law, no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no black, no white, but one country, one citizenship equal rights and a common destiny for all. A government that cannot or does not protect the humblest citizen in his right to life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, should be reformed or overthrown, without delay.
The ballot is the only safety.
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.
Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.
My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work. Whether or not such men have acquired material, moral or intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued, is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success... All human experience proves over and over again, that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud and dishonour, is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.
Everybody has asked the question, ... 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! You're doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, ... let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also.
...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.
...of whom I can say with a grateful heart, 'I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger, and he took me in.'
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.
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.
I escaped from slavery and became a leading abolitionist and speaker.