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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON…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.
More Booker T. Washington Quotes
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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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Political activity alone cannot make a man free. Back of the ballot, he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for oneself.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Not how much, but how well, should be the motto. One problem thoroughly understood is of more value than a score poorly mastered.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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 -
Start where you are with what you have, knowing that what you have is plenty enough.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
A life is not worth much of which it cannot be said, when it comes to its close, that it was helpful to humanity.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Character, not circumstances, makes the man.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
The circumstances that surround a man’s life are not important. How that man responds to those circumstances IS IMPORTANT. His response is the ultimate determining factor between success and failure.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Let our opportunities overshadow our grievances.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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 -
Ignorance is more costly to any State than education.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your ‘civilization’.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
You 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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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.
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If you truly want to measure the success of a man, you do not measure it by a position he has achieved, but by the obstacles he has overcome.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON