Booker T. Washington - Race Quotes

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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. Looked at from this standpoint, I almost reached the conclusion that often the Negro boy's birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.

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

Booker T. Washington
It is not in the highest degree helpful to a race to be continually praised, and thus have its weaknesses overlooked; neither is it the most helpful thing to have its faults alone continually dwelt upon. What is needed is downright, straightforward honesty in both directions.

Booker T. Washington
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
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
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
Mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless the individual has worth.

Booker T. Washington
Let us keep before us the fact that, almost without exception, every race or nation that has ever got upon its feet has done so through struggle and trial and persecution; and that out of this very resistance to wrong, out of the struggle against odds, they have gained strength, self-confidence, and experience which they could not have gained in any other way.

Booker T. Washington
I knew that, in a large degree, we were trying an experiment — that of testing whether or not it was possible for Negroes to build up and control the affairs of a large education institution. I knew that if we failed it wold injure the whole race.

Booker T. Washington
There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

Booker T. Washington
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.

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

Booker T. Washington
In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not keep the world from what it wants.

Booker T. Washington
No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized.

Booker T. Washington
I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.

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
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
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
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
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