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Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.

Frederick Douglass

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Frederick Douglass
Age: 77 †
Born: 1818
Born: February 14
Died: 1895
Died: February 20
Abolitionist
Autobiographer
Businessperson
Caulker
Diplomat
Editor
Film Editor
Journalist
Orator
Politician
Suffragist
Writer
Talbot County
Maryland
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
Frederick Augustus Washington Baly
Fred Bailey
Freddie Bailey
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Literacy
Importance
Forever
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More quotes by Frederick Douglass

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It is the mission of the printer to diffuse light and knowledge by a judicious intermingling of black with white.
Frederick Douglass
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You have to take power. No one gives it.
Frederick Douglass
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Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.
Frederick Douglass
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Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.
Frederick Douglass
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In life you don't get everything you pay for, but you must pay for everything you get.
Frederick Douglass
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Fortune may crowd a man's life with fortunate circumstances and happy opportunities, but they will, as we all know, avail him nothing unless he makes a wise and vigorous use of them.
Frederick Douglass
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For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
Frederick Douglass
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Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.
Frederick Douglass
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We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans.
Frederick Douglass
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The opposite of compromise is character.
Frederick Douglass
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Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.
Frederick Douglass
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I escaped from slavery and became a leading abolitionist and speaker.
Frederick Douglass
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[...] allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put[...] There is no royal road to perfection.
Frederick Douglass
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Neither we, nor any other people, will ever be respected till we respect ourselves and we will never respect ourselves till we have the means to live respectfully.
Frederick Douglass
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He who would be free must strike the first blow.
Frederick Douglass
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I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
Frederick Douglass
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The District of Columbia is the one spot where there is no government for the people, of the people and by the people.
Frederick Douglass
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Everybody has asked the question . . . 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!
Frederick Douglass
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I had as well be killed running as die standing
Frederick Douglass
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In the struggle for justice, the only reward is the opportunity to be in the struggle. You can't expect that you're going to have it tomorrow. You just have to keep working on it.
Frederick Douglass