78 Iconic Booker T Washington Quotes To Move Humanity Forward

We’re continuing our coverage of inspirational African-Americans on Execute Resources, and Booker T Washington is highly admired for his brave work. He advised numerous presidents of the United States to represent the African American community at a time where slavery was only recently abolished. As a child, Booker was born into slavery on a plantation in southwest Virginia.

Its through his work as an adult that thousands of African American families began to live a traditional middle-class lifestyle. He campaigned for education and entrepreneurship which he believed could assist in black progress where traditional jobs were scarcely found.

At Execute Resources, we’re only a drop in the ocean compared to the incredible impact that Booker T Washington made. Yet we’re proponents of education and empowerment through sheer hustle, and these quotes are highly aligned with our vision for you and your familiy.

1. 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.

Booker T. Washington

2. Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

3. Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

4. We must reinforce argument with results.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

5. He who lives outside the law is a slave. The free man is the man who lives within the law, whether that law be the physical or the divine.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

7. Education is not a thing apart from life—not a “system,” nor a philosophy; it is direct teaching how to live and how to work.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

8. I will not permit any man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

10. Great men cultivate love… Only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

11. I believe that any man’s life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement, if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day, and as nearly as possible reaching the high water mark of pure and useful living.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

15. My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

17. Character is power.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

19. You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

20. 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.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

21. Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

22. Too often the educational value of doing well what is done, however little, is overlooked. One thing well done prepares the mind to do the next thing better. Not how much, but how well, should be the motto. One problem thoroughly understood is of more value than a score poorly mastered.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

23. If you are milking cows and feel that you know all that there is to be known about it, you have simply reached the point where you are useless and unfitted for the work.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

25. 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

26. We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

28. The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

29. 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.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

30. In all things social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

31. Cast down your bucket where you are.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

32. We should not permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

33. Then very few persons have any idea of the large number of applications for help that rich people are constantly being flooded with.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

34. There are two ways of exerting one’s strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

35. Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things!

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

36. 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

37. Opportunities never come a second time, nor do they wait for our leisure.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

38. Education is not what a person is able to hold in his head, so much as it is what a person is able to find.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

39. I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

40. Those who have accomplished the greatest results are those who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient, and polite.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

41. A whining crying race may be pitied but seldom respected.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

43. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

44. 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

45. 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

46. Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

47. 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.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

48. One of the highest and surest signs of civilization is that a people have learned to obey the commands of those who are placed over them.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

49. To be one with God is to be like God. Our real religious striving then, should be to become one with God; sharing with Him in our poor humble way His qualities and attributes.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

50. It is pretty hard, however, to help a young man who has started wrong. Once he gets the idea that — because he has crammed his head full with mere book knowledge — the world owes him a living, it is hard for him to change.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

51. The one thing that is most worth living for—and dying for, if need be—is the opportunity of making someone else happier and more useful.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

52. Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

53. From his example in this respect I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

54. 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

55. Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

56. The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

58. It takes no more time to be polite to every one than it does to be rude.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

59. The world cares very little what you or I know, but it does care a great deal about what you or I do.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

60. The thing to do when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

61. The study of art that does not result in making the strong less willing to suppress the weak means little.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

62. Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

63. I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

64. 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.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

65. If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

66. I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

67. I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

68. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

69. There is no escape — man drags man down, or man lifts man up.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

70. No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

71. I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

72. In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever, in any country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

73. To young, inexperienced minds there seems to be a kind of fatal charm about the vague, the distant, and the mysterious.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

75. I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

76. In my contact with people, I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to permit them to come into contact with other souls – with the great outside world.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

77. Success always leaves footprints.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

78. It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for oneself.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON