Booker T. Washington Quotes

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

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.

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.

If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.

Success always leaves footprints.

Lay hold of something that will help you, and then use it to help somebody else.

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

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.

Political activity alone cannot make a man free. Back of the ballot, he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character.

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

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

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.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

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.

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.

There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.