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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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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
Opportunity
Crowds
Use
Fortunate
Makes
Opportunities
May
Fortune
Nothing
Circumstances
Men
Unless
Avail
Life
Wise
Vigorous
Happy
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More quotes by 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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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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A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
Frederick Douglass
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The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a future too, with hope in it. The desire to be free, awakened my determination to act, to think, and to SPEAK.
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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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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The man who will get up will be helped up and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.
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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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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We succeed, not alone by the laborious exertions of our faculties, be they small or great, but by the regular, thoughtful and systematic exercise of them.
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 had as well be killed running as die standing
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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I escaped from slavery and became a leading abolitionist and speaker.
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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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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Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
Frederick Douglass
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These were choice documents to me... They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance.
Frederick Douglass
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Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
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