Booker T. Washington

There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down the other is pulling up.

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

I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.

Character not circumstances makes the man.

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

We don't just borrow words, on occasion English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him and to let him know that you trust him.

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 had to overcome while trying to succeed.

We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law but we do want them for our brothers.

To hold a man down you have to stay down with him.

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

We must reinforce argument with results.

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

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.

Character is power.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

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.

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.

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

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