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An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.

Booker T. Washington

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

Capture Determination Patience Strength Success
I think I have learned that the best way to lift one’s self up is to help someone else.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Help Learning Lift Myself Thinking Way
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
It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for oneself.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Deal Foundation Greatness Myself Start Thinking
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

Alone Character Economy Freedom Intelligence Man Politics Skills
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

End Himself Race Regard Willing World
My whole life has largely been one of surprises.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Life Oneself Surprise
If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Attention Feeling Inheritance Life Mom Myself Worth
No one can degrade us except ourselves.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Exception Ourselves Validation Value
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

Beat Borrow Language Occasion Vocabulary Word
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

Poem Prosperity Race Writing
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
It often requires more courage to suffer in silence than to rebel, more courage not to strike back than to retaliate, more courage to be silent than to speak.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Courage Rebel Silence Suffering
A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Empowerment Lift Race
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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Cherish Cultivation Greatness Love Strong Weakness
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
Ignorance is more costly to any State than education.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Cost Education Ignorance Price State
Leaders have devoted themselves to politics, little knowing, it seems that political independence disappears without economic independence that economic independence is the foundation of political independence.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Devotion Foundation Independence Leadership Politics
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

Heart Nation People Slave Unfortunate
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

Education Greatness Growth Man Old Woman
I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim “”Do not get others to do what you can do yourself.”” My motto on the other hand is; “”Do not do that which others can do as well.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Affirmation Learning Myself Thinking
I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Hate Himself Low Man Myself
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

Beginning Ideas Oneself Patience Success
Decide to be your best. In the long run the world is going to want and have the best and that might as well be you.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Best Decision World Yourself
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

Essential Progress Purity Separate
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

Growth Law Man Stop
You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Accomplishment Goal Measurement Obstacle Reach

An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.

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An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.

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