If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us [slaves]? … There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
“I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”
“Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. … I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. … for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory. … They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. Mark them!”
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. 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.
Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.