Frederick Douglass

His religion was a thing altogether apart from his worldly concerns.

For the sake of this, most of us would live on a crust of bread and a cup of cold water.

We want to live in the land of our birth, and to lay our bones by the side of our fathers; and nothing short of an intense love of personal freedom keeps us from the south.

Knowing this fact, as the slaveholder does, and judging the slave by himself, he naturally concludes the slave will be idle whenever the cause for this fear is absent.

The overseer is generally accuser, judge, jury, advocate and executioner.

In leaving you, I took nothing but what belonged to me, and in no way lessened your means for obtaining an honest living.

We are distinct persons, and are each equally provided with faculties necessary to our individual existence.

The fear of punishment is the sole motive for any sort of industry, with him.

Nature does not make your existence depend upon me, or mine to depend upon yours.

I am not by nature bond to you, or you to me.

There is no earthly inducement, in the slave’s condition, to incite him to labor faithfully.

That plantation is a little nation of its own, having its own language, its own rules, regulations and customs.