Best Booker T. Washington Quotes on Race and Slavery:
1- “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
2- “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
3- “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
4- “The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.” ~ Booker T. Washington
5- “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
6- “Success waits patiently for anyone who has the determination and strength to seize it.” ~ Booker T. Washington
7- “I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” ~ Booker T. Washington
8- “Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.” ~ Booker T. Washington
9- “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” ~ Booker T. Washington
10- “There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.” ~ Booker T. Washington
11- “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
12- “Success is not measured by where you are in life, but the obstacles you’ve over come” ~ Booker T. Washington
13- “Great men cultivate love…only little men cherish a spirit of hatred” ~ Booker T. Washington
14- “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
15- “Think about it: we went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.” ~ Booker T. Washington
16- “Decide to be your best. In the long run the world is going to want and have the best and that might as well be you.” ~ Booker T. Washington
17- “No one can degrade us except ourselves.” ~ Booker T. Washington
18- “Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” ~ Booker T. Washington
19- “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
20- “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
21- “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
22- “I 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.” ~ Booker T. Washington
23- “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
24- “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
25- “Holding a grudge does not hurt the person against whom the grudge is held, it hurts the one who holds it.” ~ Booker T. Washington
26- “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
27- “Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.” ~ Booker T. Washington
28- “Start where you are with what you have, knowing that what you have is plenty enough.” ~ Booker T. Washington
29- “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
30- “We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.” ~ Booker T. Washington
31- “Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.” ~ Booker T. Washington
32- “Educated men and women, especially those who are in college, very often get the idea that religion is fit only for the common people. No young man or woman can make a greater error than this.” ~ Booker T. Washington
33- “Character, not circumstances, makes the man.” ~ Booker T. Washington
34- “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
35- “Success always leaves footprints.” ~ Booker T. Washington
36- “An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.” ~ Booker T. Washington
37- “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
38- “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.” ~ Booker T. Washington
39- “Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.” ~ Booker T. Washington
40- “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
41- “Ignorance is more costly to any State than education.” ~ Booker T. Washington
42- “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, in any country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists.” ~ Booker T. Washington
43- “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.” ~ Booker T. Washington
44- “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
45- “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
46- “There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.” ~ Booker T. Washington
47- “I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value.” ~ Booker T. Washington
48- “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
49- “Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.” ~ Booker T. Washington
50- “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
