Top 15 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 overcome while trying to succeed.

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

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.

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

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

A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a majority.

Character, not circumstance, makes the person.

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

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.

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

We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity

The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.

Among a large class, there seemed to be a dependence upon the government for every conceivable thing. The members of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the federal officials to create one for them. How many times I wished then and have often wished since, that by some power of magic, I might remove the great bulk of these people into the country districts and plant them upon the soil – upon the solid and never deceptive foundation of Mother Nature, where all nations and races that have ever succeeded have gotten their start – a start that at first may be slow and toilsome, but one that nevertheless is real.