Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable.

A life that stood out as a gospel of self-forgetting service. He could have added fortune to fame but caring for neither he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world. The centre of his world was the south where he was born in slavery some 79 years ago and where he did his work as a creative scientist.

My work is that of keeping every operation down (in size) so that the farmer and the man farthest down can get hold of it.

If you listen carefully enough to anything, it will talk to you.

The secret of my success? It is simple. It is found in the Bible.

I went to the trash pile at Tuskegee Institute and started my laboratory with bottles, old fruit jars and any other thing I found I could use. ... [The early efforts were] worked out almost wholly on top of my flat topped writing desk and with teacups, glasses, bottles and reagents I made myself.

The beating on the tail of the snake may stop his progress a little, but the more vital parts must be struck before his poisonous death-dealing venom will be wiped out.