Quotes by Booker T. Washington

“Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”

“Character is power.”

“You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals.”

“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.”

“I knew that, in a large degree, we were trying an experiment--that of testing whether or not it was possible for Negroes to build up and control the affairs of a large education institution. I knew...”

“In my contact with people, I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way...”

“One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.”

“In my contact with people I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way ...”

“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”

“We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.”

“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 ...”

“With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a with youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which...”

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”

“In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles ...”

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

“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.”

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

“Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.”

“There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.”

“At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.”