Great Quotes by Frederick Douglass and why you should see the extraordinary one-man performance at Spoleto

“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.”

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

“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”

Frederick Douglass: No Turning Back – Exclusive Spoleto Performance Details

“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.”

“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Some know the value of education by having it. I knew its value by not having it.”

“A smile or a tear has no nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man.”

“Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property is safe.”