Frederick Douglass Quotes

“What a pity there was not some American democratic Christian at the door of his splendid mansion, to bark out at my approach, “They don’t allow niggers in here!”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings

“while you have strong frames and robust constitutions, you have not the gift of intellect—you could not think for yourselves—you could not provide for yourselves—so the Lord in his infinite goodness has given you kind masters to think for you—[laughter].”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings

“Behold your hard hands and your strong frames, your masters and mistresses have soft hands and delicate constitutions, and white skins; whence this difference; ‘it is the Lord’s doings and marvellous in our eyes.”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings

“But they accepted the slave holders’ invitation, took their money; paralysed their own Christian feelings, turned a deaf ear to the groan of the slave as they went on their way through the South—were dumb on the question of slavery—were invited by the slave owners to their pulpits—dined at their tables, sat in their pews—heard them preach to their slave congregations—took the blood money which was offered them, and brought it to Scotland, to pay the Free Church ministers—[loud cheers].”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings

“Some sins, some evils in communities, could be best removed by the virtuous efforts of individuals composing these communities, but it was not so with slavery. That is such a monstrous system, such a giant crime, that it begets a character favorable to its own existence, vanquishing the moral perception, and blinding the moral vision of all who come in contact with it; and a nation has not the moral energy necessary to its removal.”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings

“America will not allow her children to love her. She seems bent on compelling those who would be her warmest friends, to be her worst enemies.”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings

“If ever I had any patriotism, or any capacity for the feeling, it was whipt out of me long since by the lash of the American soul-drivers.”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings

“At last, the evening previous to our arrival at Liverpool, the slaveholders, convinced that reason, morality, common honesty, humanity, and Christianity, were all against them, and that argument was no longer any means of defence, or at least but a poor means, abandoned their post in debate, and resorted to their old and natural mode of defending their morality by brute force.”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings

“You degrade us, and then ask why we are degraded—you shut our mouths, and then ask why we don’t speak—you close your colleges and seminaries against us, and then ask us why we don’t know more!”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings