Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
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.
I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.
Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.
When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.
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.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
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.
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.
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.
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! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.
Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.
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.
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.
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
Without Struggle There Is No Success
It is easier to build strong men, than to repair broken ones.
Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.
Without struggle there can be no forward progress!
