Frederick Douglass Quotes

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.

History pays more attention to reformers than others. We pay more attention to dissenters too.

Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, it carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.

The reformer does not want to move left; he wants to move forward.

'Revolution' does not necessarily involve sanguinary strife nor is there any place in it for individual vendetta. It is not the cult of the bomb and the pistol. By 'Revolution' we mean that the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice, must change.

Every reform means awakening. Once truly awakened, the nation will not be satisfied with reform only in one department of life.

Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.

You don't need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change.

The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.

There are reformers in every country.

Nothing counts but pressure, pressure, more pressure, and still more pressure through broad organized aggressive mass action.

The way to promote an idea is to put the word reform at the end of it.

The common people, the toilers, the men of uncommon sense—these have been responsible for nearly all social-reform measures which the world accepts today.

Forming the new society within the shell of the old.

Reform starts here.

The function of a progressive is to keep on protesting until things get so bad that a reactionary demands reform.

Only force would produce social change.

Some people like to reform everything they can get their hands on. Others want to fold away and worship whatever is presented to them by the caprice of history.

Violence never has and never will bring constructive change, but my life experience tells me that most change is violent.

Your honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means....

One of the reasons that change takes place is that the people who produce it believe change can take place.

I am for the restoration of order, not for the restoration of the old order.

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

The Socialist movement is the abolitionist movement of the 20th century.

A very great percentage of our people see only from $200 to $600 cash in hand during the course of a year, and many, many others have incomes under $1000 or ranging from $1000 to $2000 a year. This problem involves so many people that we cannot just say "Let the government solve it." We, as a people, must solve it by deciding on the type of social and economic philosophy which we wish to see established in this country. When we know what changes we want, we can then set government machinery to work to accomplish them, but the people themselves must know what it is they wish to do.