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“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.”

Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), chapter X

Context In his 1845 autobiography, recalling his time as a hired-out ship caulker in Baltimore, he explains why better conditions only sharpened his wish to be free.

Portrait of Frederick Douglass
Frederick DouglassUnited States · 1818–1895
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