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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

A sure way for one to lift himself up is by helping to lift someone else.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Helping Lifts Way
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

Circumstance Determination Factor Failure Important Life Man Success Surround
I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Angel Hate Positive
Character, not circumstances, makes the man.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Character Circumstance Man
My whole life has largely been one of surprises.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Become Life Surprise Whole
Whenever your life touches mine, you make me stronger of weaker… there is no escape… people drag others or lift others up.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Escape Life People Strong Touch Weakness Yourself
You may fill your heads with knowledge or skillfully train your hands, but unless it is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing. You will be no better than the most ignorant.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Head Heart Ignorance Knowledge Skills Training Yourself
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

Civilization Live Problem Question Study
Success is not measured by where you are in life, but the obstacles you’ve over come
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Inspirational Motivational Obstacles
In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Country Disadvantage Law Men People
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Inspirational Work Writing
We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Ignorance Narrow Rise Selfish
Never let your work drive you. Master it and keep it in complete control.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Complete Control Drive Master Work
We must not only become reliable, progressive, skillful and intelligent, but we must keep the idea constantly before our youths that all forms of labor, whether with the hand or head, are honorable.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Hands Ideas Intelligent
Character is power.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Character One Liner Power
No one can degrade us except ourselves.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Degrade Positive Positivity
Success waits patiently for anyone who has the determination and strength to seize it.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Determination Waiting
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

Country Individual People Race World
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

Ability Character Himself Politics Possession Right Time
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

Mastered Problem Score Understand
Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Countries People Some Jobs Wants
The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for-and dying for, if need be-is the opportunity of making someone else more happy.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Dying Life Opportunity
Ignorance is more costly to any State than education.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Country Ignorance People States
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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Attention Life Success
No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Effort Greatness Injury Life Race Youth
Years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Ancestry Children Effort Higher Leave Proud
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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Communication Pockets Vocabulary

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.

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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.

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