Frederick Douglass

Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out. ”

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

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. ”