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Frederick Douglass Biography

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; c. February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In his time, he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.

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Frederick Douglass Quotes

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

Exist, Freedom, Rights, Tyrants, Utter

This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

Fourth, July, May, Mourn, Rejoice

Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. . . I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.

Calm, Disappear, Forever, Star, Stars, Wind

The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation's history — the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

4Th Of July, Celebrate, Gratitude, Instrument, Pride, Said

Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.

Advantage, Firsts, Lecturer, Rare, Slave

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

Education, Learning, People, Thing

Your national greatness, swelling vanity; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

Greatness, Hollow, Hymns, National, Prayer, Religious

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Concedes, Demand, Freedom, Power, Tyrants

No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty

Action, Hands, Mean, Men, Protecting, Thought

[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.

Air, Case, Men, Perfect, Spiritual, Subsists

A man is worked on by what he works on.

Men, Works, Worked, Man

The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing.

Disappear, Forever, Soul, Sound, Trump

Educate your sons and daughters, send them to school, and show them that beside the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the jury box, you also have the knowledge box.

Cartridge, Daughter, Daughters, School, Son, Sons

I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of increasing my contentment; it only increased my desire to be free, and set me thinking of plans to gain my freedom.

Black History, Free, Increased, Inspirational, Set, Thinking

The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected.

Advantage, Freedom, Law, Power, Respected, Sides

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

Argument, Irony, Like, Needed, Time

The more men you make free, the more freedom is strengthened, and the more men you give an interest in the welfare and safety of the State, the greater is the security of the State.

Free, Giving, Make, Men, Safety, State

There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution

American, Black History, Constitution, Honor, Loyalty, People

I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.

Look, Looks, Man, Men, Patriotic, Slave

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.

Be A Slave, Child, Children, Knowledge, Slave

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