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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

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

Men Overcoming Want
No one can degrade us except ourselves.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Degrade Positive Positivity
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 Remote Small Success
An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Complain Value Worth
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

Exercise Important Preparation Privilege Right
The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Happiness Less Misery People
We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Ignorance Narrow Rise Selfish
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
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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Attention Evil Giving
An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Application Clarity Communicate
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

Learning Measurement Myself Position Success
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
No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Intellectual Live Man Material Place Reward
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Empowerment Yourself
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
No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Humility Karma Life
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
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

Heart Prejudice Race
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
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
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

Food Men Thinking
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
Even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Agricultural Condition Incomparably Population Sicily
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

Exercise Important Law
If no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life, the Christ like work which the Church of all denominations in America has done during the last 35 years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Christian Men Years
Lay hold of something that will help you, and then use it to help somebody else.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Generosity Help Hold Kindness
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.’
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Men Race White

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.

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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.

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