Top 280 Frederick Douglass Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Change Quotes, Freedom Quotes

2. “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

— Frederick Douglass

3. “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

— Frederick Douglass

4. “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”

— Frederick Douglass

5. “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.”

— Frederick Douglass

6. “You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Justice Quotes

7. “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.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Uplifting Quotes

8. “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.”

— Frederick Douglass

9. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

— Frederick Douglass

10. “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”

— Frederick Douglass

11. “A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.”

— Frederick Douglass

12. “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

— Frederick Douglass

13. “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

— Frederick Douglass

14. “I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.”

— Frederick Douglass

15. “A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.”

— Frederick Douglass

16. “The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.”

— Frederick Douglass

17. “I had as well be killed running as die standing.”

— Frederick Douglass

18. “It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”

— Frederick Douglass

19. “The soul that is within me no man can degrade.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Being Yourself Quotes

20. “People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Freedom Quotes, Quotes About Work

21. “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.”

— Frederick Douglass

22. “The opposite of compromise is character.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Character Quotes

23. “What to the Slave is the 4th of July.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: 4th Of July Quotes

24. “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.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Struggle Quotes, Justice Quotes

25. “One and God make a majority.”

— Frederick Douglass

26. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

— Frederick Douglass

27. “A slave is someone who sits down, and waits for someone to free them.”

— Frederick Douglass

28. “Our destiny is largely in our hands.”

— Frederick Douglass

29. “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Rights Quotes

30. “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.”

— Frederick Douglass

31. “Right is of no Sex-Truth is of no Color-God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.”

— Frederick Douglass

32. “Some know the value of education by having it. I know it’s value by not having it.”

— Frederick Douglass

33. “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Patriotic Quotes

34. “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.”

— Frederick Douglass

35. “What is possible for me is possible for you.”

— Frederick Douglass

36. “I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity.”

— Frederick Douglass

37. “When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world.”

— Frederick Douglass

38. “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.”

— Frederick Douglass

39. “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”

— Frederick Douglass

40. “Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.”

— Frederick Douglass

41. “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

— Frederick Douglass

42. “The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.”

— Frederick Douglass

43. “In life you don’t get everything you pay for, but you must pay for everything you get.”

— Frederick Douglass

44. “When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.”

— Frederick Douglass

45. “The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.”

— Frederick Douglass

46. “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.”

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Justice Quotes

47. “A man without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him.”

— Frederick Douglass

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

— Frederick Douglass

Featured in: Patriotic Quotes

49. “Liberty for all; chains for none.”

— Frederick Douglass

50. “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.”

— Frederick Douglass