11 quotes
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.
Speech at the Civil Rights Mass Meeting (1883)
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)
Where there is seeming contentment with slavery, there is certain treachery to freedom.
The Heroic Slave (1853)
The way to abolish slavery in America is to vote such men into power as will use their powers for the abolition of slavery.
I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
I say nothing of father, for he is shrouded in a mystery I have never been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers, as it does away with families.
My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
You cannot write the bloody laws of slavery on those restless billows. The ocean, if not the land, is free.
The Heroic Slave (1853)
I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)
Slavery is essentially barbarous in its character. It, above all things else, dreads the presence of an advanced civilization. It flourishes best where it meets no reproving frowns, and hears no condemning voices.
'Inferiority' is an old dodge, as I have said; for wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved.
There is something about Hayti which we have to deplore, and so there is about the United States. Let us go back 100 years and look at Hayti, and we find it surrounded by slavery and the whole Caribbean Sea reddened by the curse.