25 Top Quotes by Frederick Douglass That You Must Read

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey Douglass, a writer, a statesman, an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, was once a slave. Surprised? You ought to be, North Americans of that time (1818-1895) had been surprised too when they found out that such a great orator was once a slave. But when you have the will-power you can rise from the ashes and spread light all around the world, just like Mr Douglass here.

Read our compilation of Best of Dr Seuss Quotes.

In this post today, I have curated his twenty-five best quotes that will show you the light you didn’t know you needed.

Happy Reading!

The Best Quotes List By Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey Douglass is Here

1. “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
2. “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.”
3. “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.”
4. “The soul that is within me no man can degrade.”
5. “Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground.”
6. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
7. “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.”

8. “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”
9. “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
10. “Some know the value of education by having it. I know its value by not having it.”
11. “The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.”
12. “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
13. “There is not a man beneath the canopy of Heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”

14. “The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.”
15. “A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.”
16. “The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.”
17. “The man who is right is a majority. He who has God and conscience on his side has a majority against the universe.”
18. “Freedom is a road seldom travelled by the multitude.”
19. “It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentlBest of Dr Seuss Quotese shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
20. “A smile or a tear has not a nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man.”
21. “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.”
22. “A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.”
23. “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
24. “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”
25. “People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.”

CONCLUSION

Douglass has written many autobiographies in his lifetime in which he wrote about his experiences as a slave which encouraged the cause of abolition. His autobiographies were actually the best sellers of that time, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. In June 1889 he became the first African-American Vice-President America ever had.

Reference: Everyday Power Blog