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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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What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
Frederick Douglass
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... and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty.
Frederick Douglass
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Vainly you talk about voting it down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing but God's truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral sentiment.
Frederick Douglass
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I have no protection at home, or resting place abroad. ... I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my birth. I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were.
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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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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Educate your sons and daughters, send them to school, and show them that beside the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the jury box, you also have the knowledge box.
Frederick Douglass
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Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.
Frederick Douglass
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If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.
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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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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Men of Color, To Arms! The case is before you. This is our golden opportunity. Let us accept it, and forever wipe out the dark reproaches unsparingly hurled against us by our enemies. Let us win for ourselves the gratitude of our country, and the best blessings of our posterity through all time.
Frederick Douglass
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The Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government.
Frederick Douglass
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There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution
Frederick Douglass
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Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place.
Frederick Douglass
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A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.
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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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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He who would be free must strike the first blow.
Frederick Douglass
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In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.
Frederick Douglass