Frederick Douglass Education Quotes & Sayings

These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up, and given thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like the bettering the condition of my race — Frederick Douglass

Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free. — Frederick Douglass

The author said Frederick Douglass described himself as a "graduate" of slavery with the marks of his diploma on his back. — Harold Holzer

Self-Made Men are those who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, or friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results ... They are in a peculiar sense indebted to themselves for themselves. — Frederick Douglass

Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it. — Frederick Douglass