Booker T. Washington Quotes

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.

Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

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.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

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

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

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.

Those who have accomplished the greatest results are those...who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient and polite.

Character is power.

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.

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

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

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

I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.

We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

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

The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what the man or woman is able to do that counts.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.