Frederick Douglass Quotes

We wrestle with the political issues of who has stewardship over life.

There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

What is done from necessity involves neither censure nor applause

I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

We all have to take responsibility for what we say and do.

Politicians may do as they please, so long as they violate no rule of right, no principle of justice, no law of God; but in no world, in no order, or condition, have men the right to do wrong.

My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth there's hardly any difference.

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises?

Power shifts your thinking from what is right and wrong to what is necessary

It is the aim of public life to arrange that all forms of power are entrusted, so far as possible, to men who effectively consent to be bound by the obligation towards all human beings which lies upon everyone, and who understand the obligation.

If you are picking the lesser of two evils, you are still picking Evil.

When somebody promises to do something, you have to think about whether that's something that you would be willing to see happen because the powers are simply too vast.

With great power comes great responsibilty.

Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

Force always attracts men of low morality.

There is no shame in black athletes not wanting to be role models, but there should be shame when they don't behave like one. It's a free country and people can do whatever they want. But just because we can doesn't mean we should.

We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible.

There is no truth without responsibility following in its wake.

McCabe's Law: Nobody has to do anything.

It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.