In the earlier days of freedom almost every coloured man who learned to read would receive “a call to preach” within a few days after he began readin… - Booker T. Washington

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.

Education is not a thing apart from life — not a “system,” nor a philosophy; it is direct teaching how to live and how to work.

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.