If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote.

Frederick Douglass

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

Frederick Douglass

strength motivational inspirational

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate 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. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.

Frederick Douglass

freedom wisdom rain

You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.

Frederick Douglass

diversity depth justice

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

Frederick Douglass

tyrants rights men

Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.

Frederick Douglass

uplifting men mean

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

patriotic ignorance peace

Power and those in control concede nothing ... without a demand. Hey never have and never will... Each and every one of us must keep demanding, must keep fighting, must keep thundering, must keep plowing, must keep on keeping things struggling, must speak out and speak up until justice is served because where there is no justice there is no peace.

Frederick Douglass

fighting wisdom struggle

In a composite Nation like ours, made up of almost every variety of the human family, there should be, as before the Law, no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no black, no white, but one country, one citizenship equal rights and a common destiny for all.

Frederick Douglass

equality pursuit-of-happiness country

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

Frederick Douglass

patriotic freedom people

There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution

Frederick Douglass

black-history loyalty people

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.

Frederick Douglass

reading forever book

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.

Frederick Douglass

respect fear integrity

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

Frederick Douglass

tyrants freedom rights

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

Frederick Douglass

freedom wisdom men

Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.

Frederick Douglass

traveled multitudes

A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

Frederick Douglass

gun rights men

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

Frederick Douglass

freedom motivational inspirational

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

Frederick Douglass

democracies-have tyrants freedom

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hatethe corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.

Frederick Douglass

land calling looks

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

Frederick Douglass

honesty integrity war