Quotes from Booker T. Washington

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.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice.

I began learning long ago that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

The great human law that in the end recognizes and rewards merit is everlasting and universal.

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

Before the end of the year, I think I began learning that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. 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.

A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up.

At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour's own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.

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.

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of race.

The world should not pass judgement upon the Negro, and especially the Negro youth, too quickly or too harshly. The Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements and temptations to battle with that are little known to those not situated as he is.