I came across an excellent set of quotes today that is all-too relevant. The UBF gospel is all about power and authority.

Some who are steeped in the UBF heritage are not able to even have an honest discussion. They just remain silent, proudly holding onto a false sense of self-righteousness, even after four reform movements spanning 50 years and even after a mass exodus of members.

The quotes are from Frederick Douglass, an American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer; and a man who was born as a slave.

“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. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.”

(source: West India Emancipation on 8/4/1857)

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.”