35 Powerful Frederick Douglass Quotes About Change and Progress

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.

They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle.

Without culture there can be no growth; without exertion, no acquisition; without friction, no polish; without labor, no knowledge; without action, no progress; and without conflict, no victory.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

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

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.

The man who is right is a majority.

One and God make a majority.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.

The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.

We must change the moral sentiment.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.