We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

Heaven's blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions under a ruthless bondage.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.

For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

I have no protection at home, or resting place abroad. ... I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my birth. I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were.