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 had to overcome while trying to succeed.”

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

“Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the everyday things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.”

“One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.”

“There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.”

“In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists.”

“There is no escape: man drags man down, or man lifts man up.”

“I think I have learned that the best way to lift one's self up is to help someone else.”

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”

“I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”

“There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.”

“Character is power.”

“Character, not circumstances, makes the man.”

“Dignify and glorify common labour. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.”

“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.”

“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.”

“We must reinforce argument with results.”

“The world cares very little what you or I know, but it does care a great deal about what you or I do.”

“Cast down your bucket where you are.”

“Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.”

“Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.”

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”

“The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.”

“In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

“The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.”