Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.
- Topic: Freedom
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Frederick Douglass
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.
I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
More on Freedom
Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.
They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.
True success, true wealth, does not come out of the barrel of a gun.
Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.
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.
Never cross a man, not afraid to die.