If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

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

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

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

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

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom.

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.

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

A man's troubles are more easily borne when he does not think them the special result of a divine displeasure, but simply a part of the general lot of mankind.

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

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

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.

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

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

In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.

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

I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.

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

The American people have this to learn: that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property is safe.

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

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

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity.

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

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.

Though the colored man is no longer subject to barter and sale, he is surrounded by an adverse sentiment which fetters all his movements.

Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.

The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied its privileges by the law of the land.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.

I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.

Viewing the matter from strict military necessity, my opinion is, that the rebels have no right to hold our men as prisoners of war.

No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty.

Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us!

The work does not end with the abolition of slavery, but only begins.

We want to be lifted up, but we must rise ourselves.

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.

If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote.

Agitate! Agitate! Ought to be the motto of every reformer. Agitation is the opposite of stagnation—the one is life, the other death.

The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve.

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.

A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him.