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. WASHINGTONIn 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.
More Booker T. Washington Quotes
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I believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
The thing to do when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Think about it: we went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
Lay hold of something that will help you, and then use it to help somebody else.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
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 -
An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
No one can degrade us except ourselves.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON -
…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 -
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 -
Character, not circumstances, makes the man.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON