Frederick Douglass: “It is an American book, for Americans, in the fullest sense of the idea.”

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

Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance.

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.

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