Frederick Douglass Quotes

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

[...] allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put[...]
There is no royal road to perfection.

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

A smile or a tear has not nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man

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

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

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

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.