From these remarks it will be evident that, 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, and which, in both temporal and spiritual affairs, is the true miracle worker. Every one may avail himself of this marvellous power, if he will. There is no royal road to perfection.
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Frederick Douglass
Abolitionist, orator, newspaper editor and U.S. diplomat; U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia 1877–1881; U.S. Minister Resident to Haiti 1889–1891
United States · 1818–1895
Politics and public life
About
Born into slavery in Maryland and escaped in 1838. Published three autobiographies and edited the North Star and other papers. Held federal appointments under several administrations, including U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia and Minister Resident to Haiti.
2 answers
I do not think much of the accident or good luck theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value. An apple carelessly flung into a crowd may hit one person, or it may hit another, or it may hit nobody. The probabilities are precisely the same in this accident theory of self-made men. It divorces a man from his own achievements, contemplates him as a being of chance and leaves him without will, motive, ambition and aspiration. Yet the accident theory is among the most popular theories of individual success.
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