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Top 25 David W. Blight Quotes (2025 Update)

David W. Blight Quote: “By the Rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

1. “By the Rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “Douglass gave voice to the reality of social death.”

2. “Douglass gave voice to the reality of social death.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves. – FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1855.”

3. “Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves. – FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1855.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “The cynic in Douglass left him saying, “Heaven help the poor slave, whose only hope for freedom is in the selfish hearts of such a people.” 32.”

4. “The cynic in Douglass left him saying, “Heaven help the poor slave, whose only hope for freedom is in the selfish hearts of such a people.” 32.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “Well the nation may forget; it may shut its eyes to the past, but the colored people of this country are bound to keep fresh a memory of the past till justice shall be done them in the present.”39.”

5. “Well the nation may forget; it may shut its eyes to the past, but the colored people of this country are bound to keep fresh a memory of the past till justice shall be done them in the present.”39.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “My poor mother,” Douglass wrote, “like many other slave women, had many children, but NO FAMILY!”21.”

6. “My poor mother,” Douglass wrote, “like many other slave women, had many children, but NO FAMILY!”21.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “Grafton, Massachusetts, in early 1842, while working solo, Douglass was met by mob hostility in addition to an unwelcoming clergy. So he went to a hotel and borrowed a “dinner-bell, with which in hand I passed through the principal streets,” he recalled, “ringing the bell and crying out, ‘Notice! Frederick Douglass, recently a slave, will lecture on American Slavery, on Grafton Common, this evening at 7 o’clock.”13.”

7. “Grafton, Massachusetts, in early 1842, while working solo, Douglass was met by mob hostility in addition to an unwelcoming clergy. So he went to a hotel and borrowed a “dinner-bell, with which in hand I passed through the principal streets,” he recalled, “ringing the bell and crying out, ‘Notice! Frederick Douglass, recently a slave, will lecture on American Slavery, on Grafton Common, this evening at 7 o’clock.”13.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “Everybody in the south,” wrote Douglass, “wants the privilege of whipping somebody else.”

8. “Everybody in the south,” wrote Douglass, “wants the privilege of whipping somebody else.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “Douglass told white northern voters that ‘The blood of the slave is on your garments. You have said that slavery is better than freedom. That war is better than peace. And that cruelty is better than humanity.”

9. “Douglass told white northern voters that ‘The blood of the slave is on your garments. You have said that slavery is better than freedom. That war is better than peace. And that cruelty is better than humanity.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “I now saw, in my situation, several points of similarity with that of the oxen. They were property, so was I; they were to be broken, so was I. Covey was to break me, I was to break them; break and be broken – such is life.”

10. “I now saw, in my situation, several points of similarity with that of the oxen. They were property, so was I; they were to be broken, so was I. Covey was to break me, I was to break them; break and be broken – such is life.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “The reader as a whole reflected, as Bingham intended, New England’s long transition from seventeenth-century Calvinism to nineteenth-century evangelical, freewill doctrine, from Puritan theocracy to the Revolutionary era’s separation of church and state.”

11. “The reader as a whole reflected, as Bingham intended, New England’s long transition from seventeenth-century Calvinism to nineteenth-century evangelical, freewill doctrine, from Puritan theocracy to the Revolutionary era’s separation of church and state.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “Slavery does away with fathers as it does away with families,” he wrote. “The order of civilization is reversed here.”

12. “Slavery does away with fathers as it does away with families,” he wrote. “The order of civilization is reversed here.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “We ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man we shall be safe.”

13. “We ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man we shall be safe.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “People came in wagons and on horseback from many miles around to festival-like meetings from Ashtabula to Youngstown, Massillon to Leesburg, Salem to Munson. They had tapped into the grass roots of the free-labor militancy and Christian idealism of the Western Reserve.”

14. “People came in wagons and on horseback from many miles around to festival-like meetings from Ashtabula to Youngstown, Massillon to Leesburg, Salem to Munson. They had tapped into the grass roots of the free-labor militancy and Christian idealism of the Western Reserve.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “All great autobiography is about loss, about the hopeless but necessary quest to retrieve and control a past that forever slips away. Memory is both inspiration and burden, method and subject, the thing one cannot live with or without.”

15. “All great autobiography is about loss, about the hopeless but necessary quest to retrieve and control a past that forever slips away. Memory is both inspiration and burden, method and subject, the thing one cannot live with or without.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “He argued that the general had been sacrificed to appease the proslavery sentiment of the border states and because of Lincoln’s constitutional conservatism.”

16. “He argued that the general had been sacrificed to appease the proslavery sentiment of the border states and because of Lincoln’s constitutional conservatism.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

17. “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “We can only guess at the thrill in Douglass’s heart, knowing that the cause he had so long pleaded – a sanctioned war to destroy slavery and potentially to reinvent the American republic around the principle of racial equality – might now come to fruition.”

18. “We can only guess at the thrill in Douglass’s heart, knowing that the cause he had so long pleaded – a sanctioned war to destroy slavery and potentially to reinvent the American republic around the principle of racial equality – might now come to fruition.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “The problem of the twenty-first century is still some agonizingly enduring combination of legacies bleeding forward from slavery and color lines. Freedom in its infinite meanings remains humanity’s most universal aspiration. Douglass’s life, and especially his words, may forever serve as our watch-warnings in our unending search for the beautiful, needful thing.”

19. “The problem of the twenty-first century is still some agonizingly enduring combination of legacies bleeding forward from slavery and color lines. Freedom in its infinite meanings remains humanity’s most universal aspiration. Douglass’s life, and especially his words, may forever serve as our watch-warnings in our unending search for the beautiful, needful thing.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “There is not beneath the sky an enemy to filial affection so destructive as slavery. It had made my brothers and sisters strangers to me; it converted my mother who bore me into a myth; it shrouded my father in mystery, and left me without an intelligible beginning in the world.”

20. “There is not beneath the sky an enemy to filial affection so destructive as slavery. It had made my brothers and sisters strangers to me; it converted my mother who bore me into a myth; it shrouded my father in mystery, and left me without an intelligible beginning in the world.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “His “wickedly selfish” Americans loved to celebrate their “own heritage, and on this condition are content to see others crushed in our midst.”

21. “His “wickedly selfish” Americans loved to celebrate their “own heritage, and on this condition are content to see others crushed in our midst.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “When the Baptist meetinghouse in Ithaca threw the band of lecturers out of its evening session, they “adjourned into God’s house – the open air” – and held their impromptu meeting in the courthouse square. Some in the mob eventually climbed to the tower and rang the courthouse bell to break up the meeting. Sometimes, when they.”

22. “When the Baptist meetinghouse in Ithaca threw the band of lecturers out of its evening session, they “adjourned into God’s house – the open air” – and held their impromptu meeting in the courthouse square. Some in the mob eventually climbed to the tower and rang the courthouse bell to break up the meeting. Sometimes, when they.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “For a former slave and then an orator and an editor whose political consciousness had awakened with the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850, who had seen the fate of the slaves bandied about in one political crisis after another, and who had struggled to sustain hope in the face of the Dred Scott decision’s egregious denials, a resolute stand by the North against secession and the Slave Power was hardly a sure thing.”

23. “For a former slave and then an orator and an editor whose political consciousness had awakened with the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850, who had seen the fate of the slaves bandied about in one political crisis after another, and who had struggled to sustain hope in the face of the Dred Scott decision’s egregious denials, a resolute stand by the North against secession and the Slave Power was hardly a sure thing.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “As a final objection to Blair’s entreaty, Douglass once again addressed the pernicious effects of colonization, which he saw as proslavery theory in disguise. Douglass insisted that slavery, racism, and future black equality be discussed as a single question, to be settled on American soil within American institutions.”

24. “As a final objection to Blair’s entreaty, Douglass once again addressed the pernicious effects of colonization, which he saw as proslavery theory in disguise. Douglass insisted that slavery, racism, and future black equality be discussed as a single question, to be settled on American soil within American institutions.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “Douglass played the prophetic role of the “suffering servant” with zeal. His famous statement about agitation, delivered in a speech in 1857, has stood the test of time and numerous protest ideologies: “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to.”

25. “Douglass played the prophetic role of the “suffering servant” with zeal. His famous statement about agitation, delivered in a speech in 1857, has stood the test of time and numerous protest ideologies: “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “As he told of it over and over in public forums later, he portrayed his victory over Covey as the demonstration of the physical force necessary for male dignity and power.”

26. “As he told of it over and over in public forums later, he portrayed his victory over Covey as the demonstration of the physical force necessary for male dignity and power.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “But what man has made, man can un-make.”

27. “But what man has made, man can un-make.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “When the influence of office or any other influence shall soften my hatred of tyranny and violence do not spare me; let fall upon me the lash of your keenest and most withering censure. – FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1879.”

28. “When the influence of office or any other influence shall soften my hatred of tyranny and violence do not spare me; let fall upon me the lash of your keenest and most withering censure. – FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1879.”

— David W. Blight

David W. Blight Quote: “Remember that oppression hath the power to make even a wise man mad.”

29. “Remember that oppression hath the power to make even a wise man mad.”

— David W. Blight

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