Frederick Douglass

"I am not guilty of any offense for which I have been imprisoned."

"The relation subsisting between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, all-commanding question for this age."

"I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death."

"Education, else despotism."

"The man who is possessed of wealth, which can command the services of others, is a man of power."

"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."

"Ignorance of the enemy is a sure way to defeat."

"I am a self-made man, and the fact of my existence is all I can claim."

"Woman's rights are human rights."

"The young colored men and women of the South are at last beginning to realize their power and importance."

"I am my brother's keeper."

"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle."

"Better to die freemen than to live as slaves."

"Nature has made nothing so inconstant as the human heart."

"The power of moral enthusiasm cannot be underestimated."

"Every tone of the drums beats for freedom."

"I would rather be a little nobody than an evil somebody."

"The question is not whether slavery is morally wrong, but whether we have the courage to end it."

"I have as much right to the use of my own legs as any other man."

"The mind of man is capable of anything because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future."

"I am convinced that the universe is under the control of a loving intelligence."

"The Negro should not be deprived of any right which is common to other men."

"Learning makes man fit for any station in life."

"The slaveholder as well as the slave is the victim of the slave system."

"I am not ashamed of my past; I am not ashamed of my scars."

"A man's character is his fate."

"I feel assured that there is nothing in my character that should prevent me from the exercise of every civil and political right."

"The mind refuses to be imprisoned."

"Every one who takes himself seriously is ridiculous."

"I am determined to be an advocate for the cause of human freedom."