

“You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”
Traced to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845).
More from Frederick Douglass
“When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world.”
Frederick Douglass
Speech to the International Council of Women · 1888
verified“The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.”
Frederick Douglass
Speech on the anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia · 1885
verified“Let the nation try justice and the problem will be solved.”
Frederick Douglass
Lessons of the Hour · 1894
verified“What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.”
Frederick Douglass
What the Black Man Wants · 1865
verified“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 Douglass
Speech at the Civil Rights Mass Meeting · 1883
verified“I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.”
Frederick Douglass
The Anti-Slavery Movement (lecture) · 1855
verifiedMore Perseverance quotes
“A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”
Helen Keller
The Simplest Way to be Happy · 1933
verified“No doubt the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Helen Keller
Helen Keller's Journal · 1938
verified“Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.”
Helen Keller
We Bereaved · 1929
verified“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
You Learn by Living · 1960
verified“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Harijan · 1947
verified“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
Mahatma Gandhi
The Doctrine of the Sword, Young India · 1920
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