Booker T. Washington
I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.Collection: Evil
Whenever your life touches mine, you make me stronger of weaker... there is no escape... people drag others or lift others up.Collection: People
The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States of America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.Collection: Encouragement
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.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Inspirational
Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Self
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.Collection: Ignorance
Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.Collection: Happiness
Ignorance is more costly to any State than education.Collection: Ignorance
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.Collection: Men
No one can degrade us except ourselves.Collection: Positive
Lay hold of something that will help you, and then use it to help somebody else.Collection: Use
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.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Success
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.Collection: Struggle
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.Collection: Courage
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.Collection: Race
We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.Collection: Ignorance
I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: College
Remember that everyone's life is measured by the power that individual has to make the world better-this is all life is.Collection: African American
Never let your work drive you. Master it and keep it in complete control.Collection: Family
There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.Collection: Positive