Frederick Douglass: “The fear of punishment was the sole motive of any sort of industry with him.”

His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.

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.

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.

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