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Do not do that which others can do as well.

Booker T. Washington

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

Enough Start Yourself
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
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
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

Book Equal Men
Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Common Excellence Way
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
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
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
Success is not measured by where you are in life, but the obstacles you’ve over come.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Life Measurement Obstacle Success Yourself
My whole life has largely been one of surprises.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Life Oneself Surprise
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
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
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 Success
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
I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Hate Man Myself Permit
I believe that any man’s life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement, if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day, and as nearly as possible reaching the high-water mark of pure and useful living.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Hope Life Success
Leaders have devoted themselves to politics, little knowing, it seems that political independence disappears without economic independence that economic independence is the foundation of political independence.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Devotion Foundation Independence Leadership Politics
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
I believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Believe Health Heart
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
No one can degrade us except ourselves.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Exception Ourselves Validation Value
Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Exception Hard Work Result Worth
One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Himself Hold Man
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
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

Do not do that which others can do as well.

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Do not do that which others can do as well.

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