Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to multiple presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community and of the contemporary black elite. This Booker T Washington quotes on education, leadership will motivate you.
Best 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.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “There is another class of colored 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
- “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
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“Success waits patiently for anyone who has the determination and strength to seize it.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “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 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
- “I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.” ~ Booker T. Washington
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“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “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
- “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
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“Success is not measured by where you are in life, but the obstacles you’ve overcome” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “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
- “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
- “Great men cultivate love…only little men cherish a spirit of hatred” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “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
- “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, their slavery exists. Wherever in any country, the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, their freedom exists.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what the man or woman is able to do that count.” ~ Booker T. Washington
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“Character, not circumstances, makes the man.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “Think about it: we went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out with 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
- “Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” ~ Booker T. Washington, Booker T Washington quotes on excellence
- “No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “Holding a grudge does not hurt the person against whom the grudge is held, it hurts the one who holds it.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “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 thereafter they were in.” ~ Booker T. Washington
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“Success always leaves footprints.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of the complaint.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “The wisest among my race understand that agitations of social equality are 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
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “You may fill your heads with the 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
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“Never let your work drive you. Master it and keep it in complete control.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “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
- “Remember that everyone’s life is measured by the power that an individual has to make the world better-this is all life is.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “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
- “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.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “The individual who can do something that the world wants to be done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.” ~ Booker T. Washington
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“There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of high, simple, and useful life.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “We must not only become reliable, progressive, skillful, and intelligent, but we must keep the idea constantly before our youths that all forms of labor, whether with the hand or head, are honorable.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “In my contact with people, I find that, as a rule, it is only a 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
- “Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “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
