Skip to content

I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.

— Frederick Douglass

Another quote →

Topics

Slavery

More quotes by Frederick Douglass

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 would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.

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)

I look upon my departure from Colonel Lloyd's plantation as one of the most interesting events of my life.

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)

All Frederick Douglass quotes →

You may also like

We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?

Abraham Lincoln

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

James Connolly

The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

Abraham Lincoln

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Frederick Douglass (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.