Booker T. Washington Quotes

77 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
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
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
Ignorance is more costly to the State than education.

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

Booker T. Washington
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
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
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
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
Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

Booker T. Washington
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
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
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
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
Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work.

Booker T. Washington
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
The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.

Booker T. Washington
In one thing, at least, I feel sure that the English are ahead of Americans, and that is, they have learned how to get more out of life. The home life of the English seems to me to be about as perfect as anything can be. Everything moves like clockwork. I was impressed, too, with the deference that the servants show to their "masters" and "mistresses" - terms which I suppose would not be tolerated in America. The English servant expects, as a rule, to be nothing but a servant, and so he perfects himself in the art to a degree that no class of servants in America has yet reached. In our country the servant expects to become, in a few years, a "master" himself. Which system is preferable? I will not venture an answer.

Booker T. Washington
There is no escape — man drags man down, or man lifts man up.

Booker T. Washington
I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice, for nothing else makes one so blind and narrow.

Booker T. Washington
My whole life has largely been one of surprises. I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day of his life — that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful living.

Booker T. Washington
Cast down your bucket where you are—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Booker T. Washington
No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion.

Booker T. Washington
Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

Booker T. Washington
Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.
We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.
Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.

Booker T. Washington
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.

Booker T. Washington
The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.

Booker T. Washington