Quotes from Booker T. Washington

In all things that are purely social we [black and white] can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law, but we do want them for our brothers.

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.

If you can't read, it's going to be hard to realize dreams.

Always be Graceful and Useful Nara Bhuvaneshwari

Any problem can be solved with patience, wisdom and earnest effort.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

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.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which one has overcome while trying to succeed.

The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.

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

There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not 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 a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well.

We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion.

Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work.

It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for oneself.

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.

I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice.

They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.

I began learning long ago that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.

Success is not to be measured by the position someone has reached in life, but the obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed.