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. WASHINGTONIt means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for oneself.
More Booker T. Washington Quotes
-
-
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 -
A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up.
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 -
I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice, for nothing else makes one so blind and narrow.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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 -
No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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 -
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 -
You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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 -
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 -
I think I have learned that the best way to lift one’s self up is to help someone else.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Character is power.
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 -
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 -
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 -
From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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 -
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 -
It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not keep the world from what it wants.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Success waits patiently for anyone who has the determination and strength to seize it.
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