Frederick Douglass

She aimed to keep me ignorant, and I resolved to know, although knowledge only increased my misery.

Nature made us friends, but slavery had made us enemies.

Liberty, as the inestimable birthright of every man, converted every object into an asserter of this right.

I wished myself a beast, a bird, anything rather than a slave.

Light had penetrated the moral dungeon where I had lain, and I saw the bloody whip for my back, and the iron chain for my feet, and my good kind master, he was the author of my situation.

I have met many good religious colored people at the south, who were under the delusion that God required them to submit to slavery and to wear their chains with meekness and humility.

With a book in my hand so redolent of the principles of liberty, with a perception of my own human nature and the facts of my past and present experience, I was equal to a contest with the religious advocates of slavery, whether white or…

I had now penetrated to the secret of all slavery and all oppression, and had ascertained their true foundation to be in the pride, the power, and the avarice of man.

If I had ever wavered under the consideration that the Almighty, in some way, had ordained slavery and willed my enslavement for his own glory, I wavered no longer.

It is unnecessary to say that a dialogue with such an origin and such an end, read by me when every nerve of my being was in revolt at my own condition as a slave, affected me most powerfully.

Although slavery was a delicate subject, and very cautiously talked about among grown up people in Maryland, I frequently talked about it, and that very freely, with the white boys.

Filled with the determination to learn to read at any cost, I hit upon many expedients to accomplish that much desired end.