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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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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
May
Road
Enduring
Whole
Ordinary
Mainly
Heart
Honest
Royal
Work
Effort
Allowing
Word
Explain
Indefatigable
Ability
Endure
Fitful
Success
Patient
Unremitting
Opportunity
Perfection
Transient

More quotes by Frederick Douglass

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Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere
Frederick Douglass
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What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. ... All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... Your interference is doing him positive injury.
Frederick Douglass
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Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
Frederick Douglass
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Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.
Frederick Douglass
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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.
Frederick Douglass
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[John Brown's] zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun... I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave.
Frederick Douglass
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Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.
Frederick Douglass
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To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Frederick Douglass
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It's a poor rule that won't work both ways.
Frederick Douglass
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Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
Frederick Douglass
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Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.
Frederick Douglass
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Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.
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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When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.
Frederick Douglass
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I could, as a free man, look across the bay toward the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave.
Frederick Douglass
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Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.
Frederick Douglass
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Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it.
Frederick Douglass
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...I recognize the widest possible difference-so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other.
Frederick Douglass
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Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people.
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