By Frederick Douglass
August 3, 1857
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who
want crops without plowing up the ground, they
want rain without thunder and lightning. They
want the ocean without the awful roar of its many
waters... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never
did and it never will. Find out just what any
people will quietly submit to and you have found
out the exact measure of injustice and wrong
which will be imposed upon them, and these will
continue till they are resisted with either words
or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Source: "The Significance of Emancipation in the
West Indies." Speech, Canandaigua, New York.
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