Booker T. Washington

The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.

Leaders have devoted themselves to politics, little knowing, it seems _x000D_ that political independence disappears without economic independence _x000D_ that economic independence is the foundation of political independence.

You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too.

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

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

If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.

Great men cultivate love...only little men cherish a spirit of hatred

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.

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

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

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.

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

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

Decide to be your best. In the long run the world is going to want and have the best and that might as well be you.

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.

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

Every person who has grown to any degree of usefulness, every person who has grown to distinction, almost without exception has been a person who has risen by overcoming obstacles, by removing difficulties, by resolving that when he met discouragement he would not give up.

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

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

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

Great men cultivate love and only little men cherish a spirit of hatred; assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.