Booker T. Washington > Quotes

“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”
― Booker T. Washington

“You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.”
― Booker T. Washington

“Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

“Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than to be in bad company”
― Booker T. Washington

“Character, not circumstance, makes the person.”
― Booker T. Washington

“There are two ways of exerting one's strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.”
― Booker T. Washington

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”
― Booker T. Washington

“Success always leaves footprints.”
― Booker T. Washington

“We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Story of My Life and Work (Illustrated Edition)

“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

“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

“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

“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, Up from Slavery

“Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity”
― Booker T. Washington

“The world cares little about what a man knows;it cares more about what a man is able to do.”
― 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, Up from Slavery

“Success is not measured by the position one has reached in life, rather by the obstacles one overcomes while trying to succeed”
― Booker T. Washington

“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, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”
― Booker T. Washington

“In order to be successful in any undertaking, I think the main thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause. In proportion as one loses himself in this way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness out of his work.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

“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, Up from Slavery

“Character is power.”
― Booker T. Washington

“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, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

“I learned what education was expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labor. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labor, but learned to love labor, not alone for its financial value, but for labor’s own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.”
― Booker T. Washington

“I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man. ”
― Booker T. Washington

“In my contact with people I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to permit them to come into contact with other souls -- with the great outside world. No man whose vision is bounded by colour can come into contact with what is highest and best in the world. In meeting men, in many places, I have found that the happiest people are those who do the most for others; the most miserable are those who do the least. I have also found that few things, if any, are capable of making one so blind and narrow as race prejudice. I often say to our students, in the course of my talks to them on Sunday evenings in the chapel, that 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 some one else more happy and more useful.”
― Booker T. Washington

“Among a large class, there seemed to be a dependence upon the government for every conceivable thing. The members of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the federal officials to create one for them. How many times I wished then and have often wished since, that by some power of magic, I might remove the great bulk of these people into the country districts and plant them upon the soil – upon the solid and never deceptive foundation of Mother Nature, where all nations and races that have ever succeeded have gotten their start – a start that at first may be slow and toilsome, but one that nevertheless is real.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

“Great men cultivate love and only little men cherish a spirit of hatred; assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

“You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals.”
― Booker T. Washington