Quotes

Many popular quotes have been attributed to Harry Tubman; most of them we believe have originated in books written for children, others in the 1950s or 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement when African American history saw a sudden increase in interest by writers.

The quotes we have chosen are original quotes with historical basis and documented by its original source.

 

 “When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven”.

Harriet Tubman, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman By Sarah Hopkins Bradford.

 

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.” 

Harriet Tubman at a suffrage convention, NY, 1896.

 

“Slavery is the next thing to hell.” 

Harriet Tubman to Benjamin Drew, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, 1855.

 

I grew up like a neglected weed, – ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it. Then I was not happy or contented.” 

Harriet Tubman to Benjamin Drew, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, 1855.

 

“I said to the Lord, I’m going to hold steady on to you, and I know you will see me through”

Harriet Tubman, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman By Sarah Hopkins Bradford.

 

“..and I prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.”

Tubman to Ednah Dow Cheney, SC, 1865

 

“God’s time is always near.  He set the North Star in the heavens;  He gave me the strength in my limbs;  He meant I should be free.”

Harriet Tubman to Ednah Dow Cheney, New York City, circa 1859.

 

“There are two things I’ve got a right to, and these are, Death or Liberty – one or the other I mean to have. No one will take me back alive; I shall fight for my liberty, and when the time has come for me to go, the Lord will let them, kill me”.

Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman By Sarah Hopkins Bradford

 

“I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land; and my home after all, was down in Maryland; because my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were there. But I was free, and they should be free.

Harriet Tubman, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman By Sarah Hopkins Bradford

 

“Farewell, ole Maser, don’t think hard of me, I’m going on to Canada, where all the slaves are free”

Harriet Tubman, Harriet, the Moses of her People by Sarah Hopkins Bradford.

 

“I have heard their groans and sighs, and seen their tears, and I would give every drop of blood in my veins to free them”

Harriet Tubman, Harriet, the Moses of her People by Sarah Hopkins Bradford.

 

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