Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
- Source
- “West India Emancipation” speech, Canandaigua, New York, 3 August 1857
- Written
- 1857
About this quotation
Douglass gave the speech on the anniversary of emancipation in the British West Indies. The sentence is followed by, “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.”