I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.
— Frederick DouglassLecture, The Anti-Slavery Movement (1855)
Use itGS4/Interview: cooperate for right causes, refuse complicity in wrong, whoever asks.
Quotes / Thinkers / Frederick Douglass
Thinker · 17 quotes
Frederick Douglass quotes for UPSC
17 sourced quotes by Frederick Douglass on equality & social justice, ethics & morality, character & virtue, courage, integrity & honesty, with a use case for each in GS4, Essay and interviews.
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Vainly you talk about voting it down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing but God’s truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral sentiment.
— Frederick DouglassLove of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (October 22, 1847), Delivered at Market Hall, New York City, New York
Use itGS1/Essay: laws alone can't end social evils like dowry or caste; moral sentiment must change.
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
— Frederick DouglassSpeech on the twenty-third anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. (April 1885)
Use itEssay/GS4: national strength rests on honesty, truthfulness and public virtue.
They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me…
— Frederick DouglassUpon being forced to leave a train car due to his color, as quoted in Up from Slavery (1901), Ch. VI: "Black Race And Red Race, the penalty
Use itGS4/Essay: human dignity is inviolable; those who discriminate degrade themselves, not victims.
Personal independence is a virtue and it is the soul out of which comes the sturdiest manhood. But there can be no independence without a large share of self-dependence, and this virtue cannot be bestowed. It must be developed from within.
— Frederick DouglassSelf-Made Men (1872)
Use itLife/Interview: self-reliance must be cultivated from within; it cannot be gifted.
Liberty I will have, or die in the attempt to gain it.
— Frederick DouglassMadison Washington
Use itGS1/Essay on freedom struggles; pair with Tilak's 'Swaraj is my birthright'.
The man who is right is a majority. We, who have God and conscience on our side, have a majority against the universe.
— Frederick DouglassAs quoted in Frederick Douglass: The Colored Orator (1969) by Frederic May Holland, p. 212
Use itGS4 whistleblower case: being right with conscience outweighs being in the majority.
Let the nation try justice and the problem will be solved.
— Frederick DouglassLessons of the Hour (1894)
Use itEssay conclusion: social conflicts are solved by sincerely delivering justice.
A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.
— Frederick DouglassSpeech (15 November 1867)
Use itGS2/Essay on universal adult franchise: no one denied the vote by colour or sex.
Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.
— Frederick DouglassDouglass' chosen motto for his weekly publication The North Star. It appeared on the first issue. As quoted in Maurice S. Lee (2009), The Ca
Use itEssay on universal equality: rights and truth know no gender, colour or race.
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.
— Frederick DouglassSpeech at Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C. (22 October 1883)
Use itEssay: oppression ultimately enslaves the oppressor too; useful in caste or discrimination essays.
There is in the Constitution no East, no West, no North, no South, no black, no white, no slave, no slaveholder, but all are citizens who are of American birth.
— Frederick DouglassShould the Negro Enlist in the Union Army? (1863)
Use itGS2: Constitution sees only citizens, not region or race; link to Article 14-15.
I hold that women, as well as men, have the right to vote, and my heart and my voice go with the movement to extend suffrage to woman.
— Frederick DouglassWhat the Black Man Wants (1865)
Use itGS1: support for women's political rights; women's reservation and suffrage history.
To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.
Use itEssay: oppression depends on keeping people ignorant; education as liberation, Ambedkar's 'educate'.
The gnawings of hunger conquers by degrees, till all that a man has he would give in exchange for a single crust of bread.
— Frederick DouglassMadison Washington
Use itGS2/GS3 on food security: hunger strips people of everything; justify NFSA and PDS.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
— Frederick DouglassA Plea For Free Speech in Boston (10 December 1860), as contained in Words That Changed America, Alex Barnett, Rowman & Littlefield (reprint
Use itGS2 on Article 19: censorship wrongs both speaker and listener.
Self-made men are the men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power and position and have learned from themselves the best uses to which life can be put in this world, and in the exercises of these uses to build up worthy character.
— Frederick DouglassSelf-Made Men (1872)
Use itInterview/Essay: rising through adversity without privilege builds knowledge and worthy character.