Frederick Douglass Quotes

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.

Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle....goa ts are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.

Power cedes nothing without a demand.

Writing is powerful. Whether it's a little girl hiding from the Nazis in an attic, or Amnesty International writing letters on behalf of political prisoners, the power of telling stories is usually what causes change.

There's still injustice happening in my world. I sing my songs at concerts and I'm so grateful that the people are ready to hear them.

The bottom line is that you only have the rights you fight for.

I'm not trying to get power over white. I'm involved in a freedom struggle. Not a power struggle.

The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.

All over this world people are standing up for freedom.

When you're fighting for civil rights, it's sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Civil rights are an evolution; and you have to bring people along.

I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.

There's no question in my mind but that rights are never won unless people are willing to fight for them.

I'm going to fight for human rights, whether I do it silently behind the scenes or vocally so that I get locked up. I can't just sit back; it's not in my nature. I can't sit back and blindly ignore it, and I won't.

Civil rights happened because youth got involved. The youth stood up and helped to break the pattern that their parents had got accustomed to living. The next generation has to take that stand for whatever it is, socially, that they are involved in.

Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted.

Progress is possible, but it is fragile - and across our country, the battles for our most basic civil rights rage on.

Rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.

it is immoral for powerless people to accept this powerlessness. They may not succeed in getting power but they can fight for it, and if enough fight for it, it makes it very difficult for the people with the big sticks.

Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the struggle for equal rights.

The hope of remaking the world is indispensable in the struggle of oppressed men and women.

And let's just be honest, there is no such place called 'justice,' if by that we envision a finish line, or a point at which the battle is won and the need to continue the struggle over with. After all, even when you succeed in obtaining a measure of justice, you're always forced to mobilize to defend that which you've won. There is no looming vacation. But there is redemption in struggle.

In the words of Frederick Douglas, power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will. We must be that demand. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end the injustice.

At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one's life fighting social injustice.

The camera could be a very powerful instrument against discrimination, against poverty, against racism.