I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
The Christianity of America is a Christianity, of whose votaries it may be as truly said, as it was of the ancient scribes and Pharisees, 'They bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.
The silver trump of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness.
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.
Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these excellent qualities, and her home of its early happiness. Conscience cannot stand much violence.
I had as well be killed running as die standing.
My hopes were never brighter than now.
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.
Should a slave, when assaulted, but raise his hand in self defense, the white assaulting party is fully justified by southern, or Maryland, public opinion, in shooting the slave down.
I speak advisedly when I say this,—that killing a slave, or any colored person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the courts or the community.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
A smile or a tear has not nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man.
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.
The table groans under the heavy and blood-bought luxuries gathered with painstaking care, at home and abroad. Fields, forests, rivers and seas, are made tributary here. Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste.
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
To enslave men, successfully and safely, it is necessary to have their minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of which they are deprived. A certain degree of attainable good must be kept before them.
At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon the slave and slaveholder.
This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation.
I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
The destiny of the colored American ... is the destiny of America.
I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.
The Irish, who, at home, readily sympathize with the oppressed everywhere, are instantly taught when they step upon our soil to hate and despise the Negro...Sir, the Irish-American will one day find out his mistake.
A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnamity.
Without any appeal to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, it was enough to accept God as a father, to regard slavery as a crime.
It remains now to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause entirely removed from the Republic.
A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.
Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.
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.
A man's troubles are always half disposed of when he finds endurance the only alternative.
You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?
I was in the midst of an ocean of my fellow-men, and yet a perfect stranger to every one.
Welcome, welcome joy, welcome sorrow, welcome pleasure, welcome pain. You are all the ingredients of life -- and with you all, life is an inestimable blessing.
I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had, till I became my own master.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
A man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the produce of sugar,—and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women,—before he is ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.
I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake...the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes...denounced.
Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
Alas! I had not then learned the measure of "man's inhumanity to man," nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain.
What to the Slave is the 4th of July?
It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
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.
