1 Attachment(s)
Frederick Douglass quotes.
In light of our thread about brotherly love I thought I'd post some comments by one of the great black men in our history.
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I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.
:D :D :D Sorry I couldn't resist. I debated not posting this quote but he did say it. I have left all other political quotes out. More:
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A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.
Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.
It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
One and God make a majority.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
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. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.
Experience proves that those are oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.
A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.
When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
Whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom.
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
A man without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him.
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.
Pete