Frederick Douglass

"The love of justice is simply another name for the love of truth and virtue."

"All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another."

"The testimony of the enslaved is the most powerful voice for freedom."

"I would unite with anybody to do right and stand against anybody to do wrong."

"It is not uncommon to find people utterly insensible to the suffering they cause."

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."

"The growth of the nation has been in spite of slavery, not because of it."

"I am not asking for sympathy but for justice."

"I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us."

"The soul that is within me no man can degrade."

"I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."

"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 them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave."

"I am my own master."

"The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous."

"To those who have suffered in slavery I can say, I too have suffered."

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."

"I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

"The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery."

"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."

"Men may not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get."

"The conviction of the Negro's inferiority is firmly lodged in the minds of even the abolitionists."

"A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity."

"I am a radical, and I am glad to be one."

"The slave is a person who is compelled to work without wages, stripped of rights, and denied opportunities for education."

"There is no progress without struggle; no advancement without exertion."

"I have always been more inclined to acquiesce than to contest."

"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?"

"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

"A slave cannot breathe in England if his master brings him there."