Quotes from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
17 notable lines from Frederick Douglass · 1845
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.
If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. If you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.
Mr. Auld, Chapter VI I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.
Chapter X This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood.
Chapter X 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.
Chapter II, on the slave songs I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy.
Chapter VII From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.
Chapter VI, on overhearing Auld forbid his reading It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom.
Chapter X, after defeating Covey I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.
Opening of Chapter I I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.
Appendix For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
Chapter X You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip!
Chapter X, the apostrophe to the ships on Chesapeake Bay 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!
Chapter VII The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever.
Chapter VII I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.
Chapter V Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
Frederick Douglass I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
Frederick Douglass