Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTONYou go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too.
More Booker T. Washington Quotes
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I believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking.
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You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals.
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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.
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An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.
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I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.
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Success waits patiently for anyone who has the determination and strength to seize it.
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Success always leaves footprints.
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In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
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Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.
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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.
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Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color.
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The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.
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Political activity alone cannot make a man free. Back of the ballot, he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character.
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To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say ‘Cast down your bucket where you are.’
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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.
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And that out of this very resistance to wrong, out of the struggle against odds, they have gained strength, self-confidence, and experience which they could not have gained in any other way.
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The time will come when the Negro in the South will be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and material possessions entitle him to.
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An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
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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 had to overcome while trying to succeed.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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.
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In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
We must reinforce argument with results.
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…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.
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Never let your work drive you. Master it and keep it in complete control.
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The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what the man or woman is able to do that counts.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON