Frederick Douglass

At this moment I can more easily get my son into a lawyer’s office to study law than I can into a blacksmith’s shop to blow the bellows and to wield the sledge-hammer.

We have grown up with this republic, and I see nothing in her character, or even in the character of the American people, as yet which compels the belief that we must leave the United States.

The truth is, dear madam, we are here, and here we are likely to remain.

Then the love of country, the dread of isolation, the lack of adventurous spirit, and the thought of seeming to desert their “brethren in bonds,” are a powerful check upon all schemes of colonization, which look to the removal of the…

He does not make very great progress in civilization himself but he likes to be in the midst of it, and prefers to share its most galling evils, to encountering barbarism.

The black man (unlike the Indian) loves civilization.

I regret their election, but I cannot blame them; for with an equal amount of education and the hard lot which was theirs, I might follow their example....

It would seem that education and emigration go together with us, for as soon as a man rises amongst us, capable, by his genius and learning, to do us great service, just so soon he finds that he can serve himself better by going elsewhere.

Hence educated colored men, among the colored people, are at a very great discount.

White people will not employ them to the obvious embarrassment of their causes, and the blacks, taking their cue from the whites, have not sufficient confidence in their abilities to employ them.

At present we have not that cultivation amongst us; and therefore, we value in the preacher, strong lungs, rather than high learning.

Yet few comparatively, have acquired a classical education; and even this few have found themselves educated far above a living condition, there being no methods by which they could turn their learning to account.