On the recordJanuary 1, 1845
I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgFrederick Douglass: “I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own.”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass conveys the profound depth of his despair by stating his preference for the existence of the lowest creature over his own enslaved condition.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
Jan 1, 1881
An exceptionally poor and dependent people will be despised by the opulent and despise themselves.
Jan 1, 1881
Notwithstanding the great and all-abounding darkness of our past, the clouds that still overhang us in the moral and social sky, the defects inherited from a bygone condition of servitude, it is the faith of my soul that this brighter and…
Jan 1, 1881
Some will be more successful than others, and poverty, in many cases, is the result of misfortune rather than of crime; but no race can afford to have all its members the victims of this misfortune, without being considered a worthless…