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You may fill your heads with knowledge or skillfully train your hands, but unless it is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing. You will be no better than the most ignorant.

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

Education Greatness Growth Man Old Woman
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

Ideas People Succeed
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
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 Return Slavery
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
The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Civilization Fortunate Hands Help Race Test Willing
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

Architect Build Discussion Home Sight Strong
There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Class Jobs Race
…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
We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Clouds Ignorance Selfishness
If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Attention Feeling Inheritance Life Mom Myself Worth
We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Ignorance Narrow Rise Selfish
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
Holding a grudge does not hurt the person against whom the grudge is held, it hurts the one who holds it.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

Brotherhood Drag Men
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

Black Ethnic History Myself Race Time

You may fill your heads with knowledge or skillfully train your hands, but unless it is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing. You will be no better than the most ignorant.

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You may fill your heads with knowledge or skillfully train your hands, but unless it is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing. You will be no better than the most ignorant.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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