Harriet Tubman quotes

Children, if you are tired, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going.

I have known Harriet long, and a nobler, higher spirit or a truer, seldom dwells in human form.

I am where I am because of the bridges that I crossed. Sojourner Truth was a bridge. Harriet Tubman was a bridge. Ida B. Wells was a bridge. Madam C. J. Walker was a bridge. Fannie Lou Hamer was a bridge.

When she made it to freedom after having been a slave and she got to New York and she could have been so happy to just stay at home and just breathe a big sigh of relief but she kept going back down South to bring other freed slaves to freedom. And she used to say, "No matter what happens, keep going."

We have had the greatest heroine of the age here, Harriet Tubman, a black woman, and a fugitive slave, who has been back eight times secretly and brought out in all sixty slaves with her, including all her own family, besides aiding many more in other ways to escape. Her tales of adventure are beyond anything in fiction and her ingenuity and generalship are extraordinary. I have known her for some time and mentioned her in speeches once or twice — the slaves call her Moses. She has had a reward of twelve thousand dollars offered for her in Maryland and will probably be burned alive whenever she is caught, which she probably will be, first or last, as she is going again. She has been in the habit of working in hotels all summer and laying up money for this crusade in the winter. She is jet black and cannot read or write, only talk, besides acting.

I knew of a man who was sent to the State Prison for twenty-five years. All these years he was always thinking of his home, and counting by years, months, and days, the time till he should be free, and see his family and friends once more. The years roll on, the time of imprisonment is over, the man is free. He leaves the prison gates, he makes his way to his old home, but his old home is not there. The house in which he had dwelt in his childhood had been torn down, and a new one had been put up in its place; his family were gone, their very name was forgotten, there was no one to take him by the hand to welcome him back to life.
So it was wid me. I had crossed de line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but dere was no one to welcome me to de land of freedom, I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in de old cabin quarter, wid de ole folks, and my brudders and sisters. But to dis solemn resolution I came; I was free, and dey should be free also; I would make a home for dem in de North, and de Lord helping me, I would bring dem all dere. Oh, how I prayed den, lying all alone on de cold, damp ground; 'Oh, dear Lord,' I said, 'I haint got no friend but you. Come to my help, Lord, for I'm in trouble!'

I never met any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God.

I looked at my hands, to see if I was de same person now I was free. Dere was such a glory ober eberything, de sun came like gold trou de trees, and ober de fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.

I bring you one of the best and bravest persons on this continent — General Tubman as we call her.

I love all of the african americans like they are my children.

Oh, Lord! You've been wid me in six troubles, don't desert me in the seventh!

Excepting John Brown, of sacred memory, I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have. Much that you have done would seem improbable to those who do not know you as I know you.

I can't die but once.

Harriet Tubman, like John Mason, did not reckon the value of her own liberty in comparison with the liberty of others who had not tasted its sweets. Like him, she saw in the oppression of her race the sufferings of the enslaved Israelites, and was not slow to demand that the Pharaoh of the South should let her people go. She was known to many of the anti-slavery leaders of her generation; her personality and her power were such that none of them ever forgot the high virtues of this simple black woman.

I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.

I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.

Herself born a slave, she first tasted the sweets of liberty in 1849. She subsequently made nineteen excursions south and brought off over three hundred fugitives from bondage.