Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [21-40] of 141 Black quotesBlack QuotesBlack Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.~ Frederick Douglass To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.~ Frederick Douglass The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.~ Frederick Douglass What is possible for me is possible for you.~ Frederick Douglass Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.~ Frederick Douglass Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. ~ Frederick Douglass What shall be done with the four million slaves if they are emancipated? ... Primarily, it is a question less for man than for God -- less for human intellect than for the laws of nature to solve. It assumes that nature has erred; that the law of liberty is a mistake; that freedom, though a natural want of the human soul, can only be enjoyed at the expense of human welfare, and that men are better off in slavery than they would or could be in freedom; that slavery is the natural order of human relations, and that liberty is an experiment. What shall be done with them? Our answer is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and succeed best by being let alone.~ Frederick Douglass To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave.~ Frederick Douglass He who would be free must strike the first blow.~ Frederick Douglass The cost of liberty is less than the cost of repression.~ W. E. B. Du Bois The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.~ W. E. B. Du Bois It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disfranchise the public; and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind.~ W. E. B. Du Bois It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school.~ Joycelyn Elders Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.~ Frantz Fanon I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.~ Billie Holiday You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.~ Billie Holiday I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.~ Billie Holiday America is not like a blanket - one piece of unbroken cloth. America is more like a quilt - many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven together by a common thread.~ Rev. Jesse Jackson Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.~ James Weldon Johnson Freedom is like taking a bath -- you have to keep doing it every day!~ Florynce Kennedy Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print