I was A SLAVE—born a slave and though the fact was incomprehensible to me, it conveyed to my mind a sense of my entire dependence on the will of somebody I had never seen; and, from some cause or other, I had been made to fear this somebody above all else on earth.
In his autobiography, Douglass reflects on the incomprehensible yet deeply felt reality of being born a slave and the fear it instilled in him towards an unseen master.
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More from Frederick Douglass
Put us in Kansas or in Africa, and until we learn to save more than we spend, we are sure to sink and perish.
A race which cannot save its earnings, which spends all it makes and goes in debt when it is sick, can never rise in the scale of civilization, no matter under what laws it may chance to be.
A poverty-stricken class will be an ignorant and despised class, and no amount of sentiment can make it otherwise.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.