Booker T. Washington Quotes

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.

No one can degrade us except ourselves.

Mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless the individual has worth.

Great men cultivate love and only little men cherish a spirit of hatred; assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.

Success always leaves footprints.

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.

I think I have learned that the best way to lift one's self up is to help someone else.

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.

An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.

No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized.

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.

There is no escape - man drags man down, or man lifts man up.

The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States of America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.

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.

The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

...those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms [of the rich] do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much sufering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises.

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.

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.

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

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.