For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.

— Frederick Douglass

For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

— Frederick Douglass

From apparently the basest metals we have the finest toned bells.

— Frederick Douglass

Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning.

— Frederick Douglass

Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency;

— Frederick Douglass

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

— Frederick Douglass

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, - a justified of the most appalling barbarity, - a sanctified of the most hateful frauds, - and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of the slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

— Frederick Douglass

I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.

— Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle there is no progress.

— Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

— Frederick Douglass