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Booker T. Washington Quotes
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We are to be tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; in our ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all.
Booker T. Washington
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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.
Booker T. Washington
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The time will come when the Negro in the South will be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and material possessions entitle him to.
Booker T. Washington
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The negro has within him immense power for self-uplifting, but for years it will be necessary to guide and stimulate him.
Booker T. Washington
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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.
Booker T. Washington
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No race or people ever got upon its feet without severe and constant struggle, often in the face of the greatest discouragement.
Booker T. Washington
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Leaders have devoted themselves to politics, little knowing, it seems
that political independence disappears without economic independence
that economic independence is the foundation of political independence.
Booker T. Washington
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By habits of thrift and economy, by way of the industrial school and college, we are coming up. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up-often through oppression, unjust discrimination and prejudice-but through them all we are coming up, and with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power on earth than can permanently stay our progress.
Booker T. Washington
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In the exercise of his political rights I should advise the Negro to be temperate and modest, and more and more to do his own thinking, rather than to be led or driven by a political "boss" or by political demagogues.
Booker T. Washington
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I would set no limits to the attainments of the Negro in arts, in letters or statesmanship, but I believe the surest way to reach those ends is by laying the foundation in the little things of life that lie immediately about one's door. I plead for industrial education and development for the Negro not because I want to cramp him, but because I want to free him.
Booker T. Washington
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Ignorance is more costly to the State than education.
Booker T. Washington
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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.
Booker T. Washington
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Lay hold of something that will help you, and then use it to help somebody else.
Booker T. Washington
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I would find no interest in living in an age when there were no weak parts of the human family to be helped, no wrongs to be righted. Men grow strong in proportion as they reach down and help others up.
Booker T. Washington
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To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say 'Cast down your bucket where you are.'
Booker T. Washington
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I believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking. I do not believe that one should speak unless, deep down in his heart, he feels convinced that he has a message to deliver.
Booker T. Washington
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The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.
Booker T. Washington
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Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.
Booker T. Washington
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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.
Booker T. Washington
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The slave system on our place, in large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people.
Booker T. Washington
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From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.
Booker T. Washington
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The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for-and dying for, if need be-is the opportunity of making someone else more happy.
Booker T. Washington
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Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work.
Booker T. Washington
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A life is not worth much of which it cannot be said, when it comes to its close, that it was helpful to humanity.
Booker T. Washington
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The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.
Booker T. Washington
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Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Booker T. Washington
Creative Commons
Born:
April 5, 1856
Died:
November 14, 1915
(aged 59)
Bio:
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community.
Known for:
Up from Slavery (1901)
The Future of the American Negro (1899)
Character Building (1902)
My larger education (1911)
The Negro Problem (1903)
Most used words:
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man
life
people
learned
slavery
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negro
worth
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making
class
living
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