How we cite our quotes: (Sentence)
Quote #4
To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. (82-83)
Slaves can see that the emperor has no clothes. Douglass makes an important point, though: sometimes, by talking a lot about how things should be, people can cover up and ignore the problems with how things actually are. Just because you say something really loud over and over doesn't make it true, but it might make people believe it's true. By talking so much about freedom, Americans are ignoring the chance to make the nation truly free, and that's what Douglass gets at here.
Quote #5
Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. (84)
Americans like to think they're better than other people (see: American Exceptionalism), but guess what? All that acting like you're better actually makes you worse than you would be if you just stopped fronting and acknowledged your issues. That's a common idea throughout the speech.