Top 100 Booker T. Washington Quotes
#2. The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.
Booker T. Washington
#4. The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your 'civilization'.
Booker T. Washington
#5. Educated men and women, especially those who are in college, very often get the idea that religion is fit only for the common people. No young man or woman can make a greater error than this ...
Booker T. Washington
#6. Remember that everyone's life is measured by the power that individual has to make the world better-this is all life is.
Booker T. Washington
#8. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
Booker T. Washington
#9. The negro has within him immense power for self-uplifting, but for years it will be necessary to guide and stimulate him.
Booker T. Washington
#10. The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.
Booker T. Washington
#11. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges.
Booker T. Washington
#12. Success is not measured by where you are in life, but the obstacles you've over come
Booker T. Washington
#13. The great human law that in the end recognizes and rewards merit is everlasting and universal.
Booker T. Washington
#14. There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.
Booker T. Washington
#15. In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not keep the world from what it wants.
Booker T. Washington
#18. Education is not what a person is able to hold in his head, so much as it is what a person is able to find.I
Booker T. Washington
#19. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
Booker T. Washington
#20. The thing to do when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.
Booker T. Washington
#22. We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.
Booker T. Washington
#23. One of the highest and surest signs of civilization is that a people have learned to obey the commands of those who are placed over them.
Booker T. Washington
#25. I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.
Booker T. Washington
#26. The circumstances that surround a man's life are not important. How that man responds to those circumstances IS IMPORTANT. His response is the ultimate determining factor between success and failure.
Booker T. Washington
#27. Think about it: we went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands ...
Booker T. Washington
#29. The man who has learned to do something better than anyone else, has learned to do a common thing in an uncommon manner, is the man who has a power and influence that no adverse circumstances can take from him.
Booker T. Washington
#30. Many strikes and similar disturbances might be avoided if the employers would cultivate the habit of getting nearer to their employees, of consulting and advising with them, and letting them feel that the interests of the two are the same.
Booker T. Washington
#31. If no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life, the Christ like work which the Church of all denominations in America has done during the last 35 years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian.
Booker T. Washington
#32. I believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking. I do not believe that one should speak unless, deep down in his heart, he feels convinced that he has a message to deliver.
Booker T. Washington
#33. The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for-and dying for, if need be-is the opportunity of making someone else more happy.
Booker T. Washington
#34. In all my teaching I have watched carefully the influence of the tooth-brush, and I am convinced that there are few single agencies of civilization that are more far-reaching.
Booker T. Washington
#35. I never liked the atmosphere of Washington . I early saw that it was impossible to build up a race of which the leaders were spending most of their time, thought and energy in trying to get into office, or in trying to stay there after they were in.
Booker T. Washington
#37. Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things!
Booker T. Washington
#38. Mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless the individual has worth.
Booker T. Washington
#40. You must understand the troubles of that man farthest down before you can help him.
Booker T. Washington
#41. Never get to the point where you will be ashamed to ask anybody for information. The ignorant man will always be ignorant if he fears that by asking another for information he will display ignorance. Better once display your ignorance of a certain subject than always know nothing of it.
Booker T. Washington
#42. If you truly want to measure the success of a man, you do not measure it by a position he has achieved, but by the obstacles he has overcome.
Booker T. Washington
#43. Those who have accomplished the greatest results are those ... who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient and polite.
Booker T. Washington
#45. Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than to be in bad company
Booker T. Washington
#47. You may fill your heads with knowledge or skillfully train your hands, but unless it is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing. You will be no better than the most ignorant.
Booker T. Washington
#49. I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement, if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day, and as nearly as possible reaching the high-water mark of pure and useful living.
Booker T. Washington
#50. I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.
Booker T. Washington
#51. No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.
Booker T. Washington
#52. The thing that impressed itself most on me in Holland was the thoroughness of the agriculture and the excellence of the Holstein cattle. I
Booker T. Washington
#53. From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.
Booker T. Washington
#54. Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.
Booker T. Washington
#56. I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim ""Do not get others to do what you can do yourself."" My motto on the other hand is; ""Do not do that which others can do as well.
Booker T. Washington
#57. My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own.
Booker T. Washington
#59. Success waits patiently for anyone who has the determination and strength to seize it.
Booker T. Washington
#60. You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals.
Booker T. Washington
#61. I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.
Booker T. Washington
#62. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized.
Booker T. Washington
#63. The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.
Booker T. Washington
#64. I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice.
Booker T. Washington
#65. There is a certain class of race problem-solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.
Booker T. Washington
#70. No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.
Booker T. Washington
#71. The world should not pass judgement upon the Negro, and especially the Negro youth, too quickly or too harshly. The Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements and temptations to battle with that are little known to those not situated as he is.
Booker T. Washington
#72. Political activity alone cannot make a man free. Back of the ballot, he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character.
Booker T. Washington
#73. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say 'Cast down your bucket where you are.'
Booker T. Washington
#74. healthy. I believe that when one can grow to the point where he loves his work, this gives him a kind of strength that is most valuable.
Booker T. Washington
#75. I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.
Booker T. Washington
#76. It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for oneself.
Booker T. Washington
#77. Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.
Booker T. Washington
#78. Lay hold of something that will help you, and then use it to help somebody else.
Booker T. Washington
#79. The wisest among my race understand that agitations of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.
Booker T. Washington
#80. The white man who begins by cheating a Negro usually ends by cheating a white man. The white man who begins to break the law by lynching a Negro soon yields to the temptation to lynch a white man.
Booker T. Washington
#81. When one takes a broad survey of the country, he will find that the most useful and influential people in it are those who take the deepest interest in institutions that exist for the purpose of making the world better.
Booker T. Washington
#82. You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too.
Booker T. Washington
#86. In order to be successful in any undertaking, I think the main thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause. In proportion as one loses himself in this way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness out of his work.
Booker T. Washington
#87. The study of art that does not result in making the strong less willing to suppress the weak means little.
Booker T. Washington
#89. Leaders have devoted themselves to politics, little knowing, it seems
that political independence disappears without economic independence
that economic independence is the foundation of political independence.
Booker T. Washington
#90. The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.
Booker T. Washington
#91. Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.
Booker T. Washington
#92. The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.
Booker T. Washington
#93. We must not only become reliable, progressive, skillful and intelligent, but we must keep the idea constantly before our youths that all forms of labor, whether with the hand or head, are honorable.
Booker T. Washington
#95. Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.
Booker T. Washington
#96. Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.
Booker T. Washington
#99. rich people are coming to regard men and women who apply to them for help for worthy objects, not as beggars, but as agents for doing their work.
Booker T. Washington
#100. That my mother had strength of character enough not to be led into the temptation of seeming to be that which she was not - of
Booker T. Washington
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