“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

1880s, Speech on the Anniversary of Emancipation (1886)
Context: I admit the charge, but deny that nature, race, or color has anything to do with the fact. Any other race, with the same antecedents and the same conditions, would show a similar thieving propensity. The American people have this lesson to learn, that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property would be safe... While I hold now, as I held years ago, that the South is the natural home of the colored race, and that there must the destiny of that race be mainly worked out, I still believe that means can be and ought to be adopted, to assist in the emigration of such of their number as may wish to change their residence to parts of the country, where their civil and political rights are better protected than at present they can be at the South... The Republican party is not perfect; it is cautious even to the point of timidity; but it is the best friend we have.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel t…" by Frederick Douglass?
Frederick Douglass photo
Frederick Douglass 274
American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman 1818–1895

Related quotes

Frederick Douglass photo
Francis of Assisi photo

“Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

The Counsels of the Holy Father St. Francis, Admonition 27.
Context: Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

James Madison photo
Murray N. Rothbard photo

“I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

"Society Without A State" in The Libertarian Forum (1975) http://www.mises.org/journals/lf/1975/1975_01.pdf.
Context: I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)
Context: If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion. Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; they segregated southern churches from Christianity; they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything. That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

Virginia Woolf photo
Adlai Stevenson photo

“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech in Detroit, Michigan (7 October 1952)

Thomas Jefferson photo
Jean-Baptiste Say photo

“There is no security of property, where a despotic authority can possess itself of the property of the subject against his consent. Neither is there such security, where the consent is merely nominal and delusive.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter XIV

Alexis De Tocqueville photo

“In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.”

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter X-XIV, Chapter XII.

Related topics