Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
- Topic: Freedom, Integrity, Leadership
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Frederick Douglass
The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.
Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.
The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a future, too, with hope in it. The desire to be free, awakened my determination to act, to think, and to speak.
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.
More on These Topics
Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.
When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, butt in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - You may know that your society is doomed.
Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man's mind.
When one remains silent in the face of oppression, one is on the side of the oppressor.
You find out the necessity of Liberty as you find out the necessity of air—by not having enough of it.
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot. Men are no superior by reason of the accidents of race and color. The are superior who have the best heart—the best brain.
No man on earth is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform.
Free choice is the greatest gift God gives to his children.
Wherever there is injustice, war, discrimination against women, gays and the disadvantaged, I did my best to show up and exert moral persuasion.
Freedom is to be free from restraint and violence from others.
You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.
If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh unless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows.
Perfect wisdom has four parts; Wisdom, the principle of doing things right. Justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private. Fortitude, the principle of not fleeing danger, but meeting it. Temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately.
Sleep that masters all.
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
Only 3 things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and under performance. Everything else requires leadership.
Honor bespeaks worth. Confidence begets trust. Service brings satisfaction. Cooperation proves the quality of leadership.
The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall.
To educate in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.
We always like those who admire us; we do not always like those whom we admire.
What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.
I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare—I have no use for him, either.
