Booker T. Washington famous quotes

There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Positive #Strength #Success

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Success

Every person who has grown to any degree of usefulness, every person who has grown to distinction, almost without exception has been a person who has risen by overcoming obstacles, by removing difficulties, by resolving that when he met discouragement he would not give up.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Success #Determination #Giving Up

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Character #Men #Circumstances

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 had to overcome while trying to succeed.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Inspirational #Life #Success

Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Happiness #Helping Others #Compassion

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. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Jobs #Race #Class

Character is power.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Character

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Success

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

#Letting Go #Stay Strong #Men

Living is the art of loving. Loving is the art of caring. Caring is the art of sharing. Sharing is the art of living. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Art #Caring #Volunteer

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

#Successful #Thinking #Order

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

#Character #Heart #Hands

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 #Men #Equal

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

There is no escape - man drags man down, or man lifts man up.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Men #Brotherhood #Drag

Great men cultivate love...only little men cherish a spirit of hatred
-- Booker T. Washington

#Men #Hatred #African American

A sure way for one to lift himself up is by helping to lift someone else.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Way #Helping

Let us keep before us the fact that, almost without exception, every race or nation that has ever got upon its feet has done so through struggle and trial and persecution; and that out of this very resistance to wrong, out of the struggle against odds, they have gained strength, self-confidence, and experience which they could not have gained in any other way.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Struggle #Self Confidence #Race

A life is not worth much of which it cannot be said, when it comes to its close, that it was helpful to humanity.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Inspirational Life #Humanity #Helpful

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

#Get Well #Mean #Race

We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law, but we do want them for our brothers.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Brother #Men #Color

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

#Life #Karma #Humility

It often requires more courage to suffer in silence than to rebel, more courage not to strike back than to retaliate, more courage to be silent than to speak.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Courage #Silence #Suffering

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

#Life #Hope #Encouragement

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

#School #Race #Black History

Success always leaves footprints.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Footprint

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Inspirational #Leadership #Athlete

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

#Exercise #Law #Important

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Common #Bottom #Labor

I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Positive #Hate #Angel

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

#Success #Attention #Life Is

There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Life #Leadership #Power

We must reinforce argument with results.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Argument #Results

Lay hold of something that will help you, and then use it to help somebody else.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Use #Helping

Start where you are with what you have, knowing that what you have is plenty enough.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Knowing #Enough #Where You Are

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

#Life #Opportunity #Dying

In proportion as one renders service he becomes great.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Helping Others #Helping #Proportion

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

#Knowing #Leader #Political

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Kindness #Men #Compassion

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

#Inspirational #Work #Writing

The man who has learned to do something better than anyone else, has learned to do a common thing in an uncommon manner, is the man who has a power and influence that no adverse circumstances can take from him.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Success #Determination #Men

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Race #Diversity #Effort

Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Inspirational #Success #Uplifting

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

#Done #Quiet #Said

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

#Famous Inspirational #Race #Hands

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

#Education #Race #Independence

Success is not measured by where you are in life, but the obstacles you've over come
-- Booker T. Washington

#Inspirational #Obstacles #Where You Are In Life

No one can degrade us except ourselves.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Positive

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

#Struggle #Race #Progress

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.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Book #People #Soul

I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim ""Do not get others to do what you can do yourself."" My motto on the other hand is; ""Do not do that which others can do as well.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Business #Thinking #Hands

Let our opportunities overshadow our grievances.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Opportunity #Grievance

We shall prosper as we learn to do the common things of life in an uncommon way. Let down your buckets where you are.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Buckets #Way #Common

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

#Race #Connections #Individual

Holding a grudge does not hurt the person against whom the grudge is held, it hurts the one who holds it.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Hurt #Doe #Grudge

By habits of thrift and economy, by way of the industrial school and college, we are coming up. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up-often through oppression, unjust discrimination and prejudice-but through them all we are coming up, and with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power on earth than can permanently stay our progress.
-- Booker T. Washington

#School #College #Progress

Never get to the point where you will be ashamed to ask anybody for information. The ignorant man will always be ignorant if he fears that by asking another for information he will display ignorance. Better once display your ignorance of a certain subject than always know nothing of it.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Ignorance #Men #Ignorant

Do not do that which others can do as well.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Wells

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Clarity #Communicate #Application

An inch of progress is worth a yard of complaint.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Progress #Yards #Inches

If you can't read, it's going to be hard to realize dreams.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Dream #Realizing

If you truly want to measure the success of a man, you do not measure it by a position he has achieved, but by the obstacles he has overcome.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Men #Overcoming #Want

Most leaders spend time trying to get others to think highly of them, when instead they should try to get their people to think more highly of themselves. It's wonderful when the people believe in their leader. It's more wonderful when the leader believes in their people! You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Believe #Men #Thinking

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

#Men #Important #Success And Failure

In all things social we can be as seperate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Hands #Progress #Essentials

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I resolved then that I would permit no man, no matter what his color, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Hate #Men #Color

Political activity alone cannot make a man free. Back of the ballot, he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character.
-- Booker T. Washington

#Character #Men #Skills

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

#Race #Done #World