People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
Frederick Douglass

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

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.
Frederick Douglass

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
Frederick Douglass

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.
Frederick Douglass

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
Frederick Douglass

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
Frederick Douglass

The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
Frederick Douglass

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
Frederick Douglass

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Frederick Douglass

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
Frederick Douglass

What to the Slave is the 4th of July.
Frederick Douglass

When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.
Frederick Douglass

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.
Frederick Douglass

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
Frederick Douglass