Frederick Douglass

Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance.

To make a man a slave was to rob him of moral responsibility.

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.

Covey succeeded in breaking me--in body, soul, and spirit.

The black man (unlike the Indian) loves civilization.

True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.

Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to be small in anything.

But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.

Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.

He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.