Quotes · Skopia

17 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Person·Frederick Douglass✕clear

Speech · Political speech

The relation subsisting between the white and colored people of this country, is of all other questions, the great, paramount, imperative and all commanding question for this age and nation to solve.

Frederick Douglass

1863

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

We Negroes love our country. We fought for it. We ask only that we be treated as well as those who fought against it.

Frederick Douglass

1893

★ 2.1

Speech · Political speech

You profess to believe "that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth," and hath commanded all men, everywhere, to love one another; yet you notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred) all men whose skins are not colored like your own!

Frederick Douglass

1852

★ 3.7

Speech · Political speech

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

1886

★ 3.7

Speech · Political speech

Despite of it all, the Negro remains like iron or granite, cool, strong, imperturbable and cheerful.

Frederick Douglass

1883

★ 3.8

Speech · Political speech

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

Frederick Douglass

1885

★ 3.8

Autobiography and memoir

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · 1845

★ 3.9

Speech · Political speech

The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed.

Frederick Douglass

1853

★ 5.5

Speech · Political speech

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man, without at last finding the other end of it fastened about his own neck.

Frederick Douglass

1883

★ 5.5

Speech · Political speech

The story of our 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.

Frederick Douglass

1865

★ 6.1

Speech · Political speech

The destiny of the colored American…is the destiny of America.

Frederick Douglass

1862

★ 6.3

Speech · Political speech

No, I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be heard on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins.

Frederick Douglass

1847

★ 7.0

Speech · Political speech

The man who is right is a majority. He who has God and conscience on his side, has a majority against the universe. Though he does not represent the present state, he represents the future state. If he does not represent what we are, he represents what we ought to be.

Frederick Douglass

1852

★ 7.0

Speech · Political speech

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham.

Frederick Douglass

1852

★ 7.0

Speech · Political speech

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.

Frederick Douglass

1857

★ 7.0

Speech · Political speech

It is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Frederick Douglass

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? · 1852

★ 7.0

Speech · Political speech

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

Frederick Douglass

1857

★ 7.3