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Sunday, April 10, 2005

OUT OF THE PAST, INTO THE FUTURE

Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation,
are people 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 waters.

This struggle may be a moral 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.

Find out what people will submit to,
and you have found out the exact amount of injustice
which will be imposed upon them.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed
by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

--Frederick Douglass


(Born and brought up in slavery on a Maryland plantation, Douglass twice tried to escape and succeeded the second time. Afterwards, he gained worldwide recognition as an abolitionist lecturer, newspaper editor, and one of the most important men behind the anti-slavery movement. Anyone who knows the names of Washington, Jefferson or Lincoln, should also know the name of Frederick Douglass.)

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