My Larger Education Quotes

“I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“I have gotten a large part of my education from actual contact with things, rather than through the medium of books. I like to touch things and handle them; I like to watch plants grow and observe the behaviour of animals.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“Experience has taught me, in fact, that no man should be pitied because, every day in his life, he faces a hard, stubborn problem, but rather that it is the man who has no problem to solve, no hardships to face, who is to be pitied.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“the long and bitter political struggle in which he had engaged against slavery had not prepared Mr. Douglass to take up the equally difficult task of fitting the Negro for the opportunities and responsibilities of freedom. The same was true to a large extent of other Negro leaders. At the time when I met these men and heard them speak I was invariably impressed, though young and inexperienced, that there was something lacking in their public utterances. I felt that the millions of Negroes needed something more than to be reminded of their sufferings and of their political rights; that they needed to do something more than merely to defend themselves.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“it is the smaller, the petty, things in life that divide people. It is the great tasks that bring men together.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“It is pretty hard, however, to help a young man who has started wrong. Once he gets the idea that — because he has crammed his head full with mere book knowledge — the world owes him a living, it is hard for him to change.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“it takes no more time to be polite to every one than it does to be rude.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“In dealing with newspaper people, whether they are white or black, there is no way of getting their sympathy and support like that of actually knowing the individual men, of meeting and talking with them frequently and frankly, and of keeping them in touch with everything you do or intend to do.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“One thing that has taught me to dislike politics is the observation that, as soon as any person or thing becomes the subject of political discussion, he or it at once assumes in the public mind an importance out of all proportion to his or its real merits.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“never liked the atmosphere of Washington. I early saw that it was impossible to build up a race of which the leaders were spending most of their time, thought, and energy in trying to get into office, or in trying to stay there after they were in. So, for the greater part of my life, I have avoided Washington; and even now I rarely spend a day in that city which I do not look upon as a day practically thrown away.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“I have found in my dealings with the Negro race — and I believe that the same is true of all races that the only way to hold people together is by means of a constructive, progressive programme. It is not argument, nor criticism, nor hatred, but work in constructive effort, that gets hold of men and binds them together in a way to make them rally to the support of a common cause.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“When I meet cases, as I frequently do, of such unfortunate and misguided young men as I have described, I cannot but feel the most profound sympathy for them, because I know that they are not wholly to blame for their condition. I know that, in nine cases out of ten, they have gained the idea at some point in their career that, because they are Negroes, they are entitled to the special sympathy of the world, and they have thus got into the habit of relying on this sympathy rather than on their own efforts to make their way.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“The real trouble with the newspapers is that while they frequently exhibit the average man at his worst, they rarely show him at his best. In order to read the best about the average man we must still go to books or to magazines.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“My experience teaches me that if a man has little or no influence with those by whose side he lives, as a rule there is something wrong with him.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“as I reflected upon the matter, I discovered that these authors, in their books, were, after all merely making use of their own experiences or expressing ideas which they had worked out in actual life, and that to make use of their language and ideas was merely to get life second hand.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“wherever a school is actually teaching boys and girls to do something that the community wants, it is seldom that that school fails to enlist the interest and coöperation of all the people in that community, whether they be black or white.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“there is just as much that is interesting, strange, mysterious, and wonderful; just as much to be learned that is edifying broadening, and refining in a cabbage as there is in a page of Latin.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“the surest way to success in education, and in any other line for that matter, is to stick close to the common and familiar things — things that concern the greater part of the people the greater part of the time.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“To young, inexperienced minds there seems to be a kind of fatal charm about the vague, the distant, and the mysterious.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“There are some things that one individual can do for another, and there are some things that one race can do for another. But, on the whole, every individual and every race must work out its own salvation.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“I do not wish to give the impression by what I have said that, behind all the intemperance and extravagance of these men, there is not a vein of genuine feeling and even at times of something like real heroism. The trouble is that all this fervor and intensity is wasted on side issues and trivial matters. It does not connect itself with anything that is helpful and constructive. These crusaders, as nearly as I can see, are fighting windmills.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“the only title to place or privilege that any man enjoys in the community is ultimately based on the service that he performs”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“I have made it a rule never to deny a false report, except under very exceptional circumstances. In nine cases out of ten the denying of the report simply calls attention to the original statement in a way to magnify it. Many people who did not see the original false report will see the denial and will then begin to search for the original report to find out what it was.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“I have learned that it is pretty hard to keep anything from the newspapers that the newspapers think the public wants to know.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education

“The man who is known, and has the confidence of the public, can, if he does not allow himself to be fooled by his own popularity, accomplish a great deal more, perform a much greater public service, than the man whose name is unknown.”
― Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education