Frederick Douglass Quotes

The Frederick Douglass papers at the library of congress

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.- Frederick Douglass

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. – Frederick Douglass

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.- Frederick Douglass

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.- Frederick Douglass

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

A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.- Frederick Douglass

I did not know I was a slave until I found out i couldn’t do the things I wanted.- Frederick Douglass

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.- Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle there is no progress.– Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or 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.– Frederick Douglass