Frederick Douglass

Republics are said to be ungrateful, but ingratitude is not among the weaknesses of my people.

They thought that I possessed qualities that might be made useful to my race, and through them I was brought to the notice of the world, and gained a hold upon the attention of the American people, which I hope remains unbroken to this day.

Gratitude to benefactors is a well recognized virtue, and to express it in some form or other, however imperfectly, is a duty to ourselves as well as to those who have helped us.

If cast down, I have been exalted; and the latter experience has, after all, far exceeded the former.

If I have had kicks, I have also had kindness.

I have been greatly helped to bear up under unfriendly conditions, too, by a constitutional tendency to see the funny sides of things which has enabled me to laugh at follies that others would soberly resent.

Happily for me I have had the wit to distinguish between what is merely artificial and transient and what is fundamental and permanent; and resting on the latter, I could cheerfully encounter the former.

I have always felt, too, that I had on my side all the invisible forces of the moral government of the universe.

I have never felt myself isolated since I entered the field to plead the cause of the slave, and demand equal rights for all.

I have neither been miserable because of the ill-feeling of those about me, nor indifferent to popular approval; and I think, upon the whole, I have passed a tolerably cheerful and even joyful life.

They have brought me to the conclusion that genuine goodness is the same, whether found inside or outside the church, and that to be an “infidel” no more proves a man to be selfish, mean, and wicked, than to be evangelical proves him to be…

Incidents of this character have greatly tended to liberalize my views as to the value of creeds in estimating the character of men.