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
continue either endurance exact found imposed injustice limits measure people power prescribed quietly resisted submit till tyrants whom words wrong
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
amount continue either endurance exact found imposed injustice limits people prescribed resisted submit tyrants until whom words wrong
Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
admiring america beautiful blood blue borne brethren bright checked cursed daily drink fertile fields filled grand lakes mighty noblest outraged remember soon spirit tears thinking warm waters
In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky-her grand old woods-her fertile fields-her beautiful rivers-her mighty lakes and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked when I remember that all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slave-holding and wrong; When I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten; That her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.
answers mischief
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! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!
law sides advantage
The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected.
hypocrisy fruit christianity
I love the religion of Christianity - which cometh from above - which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy.
men people wells
Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place.
ignorance evil people
Poverty, ignorance and degradation are the combined evils, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of the US.
destiny hands our-destiny
Our destiny is largely in our hands.
men rights justice
We are free to say that in respect to political rights, we hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for men.
age records accurate
I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.
determination thinking past
The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a future too, with hope in it. The desire to be free, awakened my determination to act, to think, and to SPEAK.
wise hands pestilence
[...] 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.
opportunity important self-made
Opportunity is important but exertion is indispensable.