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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

There is no escape – man drags man down, or man lifts man up.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Escape Help Man
Mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless the individual has worth.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Carry Connection Race Superior Worth
Never let your work drive you. Master it and keep it in complete control.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Complete Control Drive Master Work
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
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
The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what the man or woman is able to do that counts.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Inspirational Knowledge Wisdom
Character is power.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Character One Liner Power
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
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 Problem Study
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
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
You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Himself Hold Man Stay
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
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
Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Beginning Dignity Glorify Labor Life
Success waits patiently for anyone who has the determination and strength to seize it.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Determination Waiting
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
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

Differences Race Running
The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Happiness Happy Inspirational
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

Body Heart People
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

Freedom Ideas Myself Return Slave
An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Abstraction Application Practical
Years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Ancestry Children Effort Higher Leave Proud
An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Inches Progress Yards
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 shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Hate Man Myself Permit
We must reinforce argument with results.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Argument Integrate Result

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.

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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.

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