Frederick Douglass

What to the Slave is the 4th of July.

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

Experience demonstrates that there may be a wages of slavery only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.

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

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

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.

I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.

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.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

That which is inhuman cannot be divine.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

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