Frederick Douglass: “It was a treat to my young and gradually opening mind, to behold this elaborate exhibition of wealth, power, and vanity.”

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

If I have had kicks, I have also had kindness.

Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.

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.