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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

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
Educated men and women, especially those who are in college, very often get the idea that religion is fit only for the common people. No young man or woman can make a greater error than this.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

College Education Errors Man Religion Woman
Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Compassionate Generosity Happiness
We shall prosper as we learn to do the common things of life in an uncommon way. Let down your buckets where you are.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Buckets Common Way
A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Individual Integrity Race
The wisest among my race understand that agitations of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Progress Race Struggle
…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.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Criticism People Proposition Result
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
Start where you are with what you have, knowing that what you have is plenty enough.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Enough Start Yourself
No one can degrade us except ourselves.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Degrade Positive Positivity
I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I resolved then that I would permit no man, no matter what his color, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

Determination Waiting
We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Clanking Country Hands Want
There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Oneself Strength Way
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
At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Economic Education Independence Politics Race Religion

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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