Quotes from Booker T. Washington

there is just as much that is interesting, strange, mysterious, and wonderful; just as much to be learned that is edifying broadening, and refining in a cabbage as there is in a page of Latin.

if Congress wanted to do something which would assist in ridding the South of the race question and making friends between the two races, it should, in every proper way, encourage the material and intellectual growth of both races.

Assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong.

I confess that what I saw during my month of travel and investigation left me with a very heavy heart. The work to be done in order to lift these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing. I was only one person, and it seemed to me that the little effort which I could put forth could go such a short distance toward bringing about results. I wondered if I could accomplish anything, and if it were worth while for me to try.

The man who is known, and has the confidence of the public, can, if he does not allow himself to be fooled by his own popularity, accomplish a great deal more, perform a much greater public service, than the man whose name is unknown.

Of my ancestry I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters, and even later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slave ship while being conveyed from Africa to America.

I have learned that it is pretty hard to keep anything from the newspapers that the newspapers think the public wants to know.

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 which he has overcome while trying to succeed.

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

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

There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

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

Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than to be in bad company.

A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a majority.

Character, not circumstance, makes the person.

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

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.

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

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

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity

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

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

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.

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.