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The whole history of the progress of human liberty show that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle....If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate 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.

Frederick Douglas,liberated slave, civil rights activist

c.1817-1895

Quoted by John Blassingame in Frederick Douglass: The Clarion Voice, 1976

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