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.
Booker T. WashingtonRead
It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for oneself.
Interpretation
Building your own foundation is crucial for personal achievement.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-creation and independence in achieving one's goals. It suggests that establishing a solid foundation through personal effort and hard work leads to greater significance and success in life.
In practice
In a graduation speech to inspire students about pursuing their dreams.
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.
The biggest message I have for young women is, Don't start cutting off branches of your career tree unnecessarily early. Sometimes women say, I know I want to have a family or play in the local symphony, and they start pulling themselves out of their career path. You don't have to take yourself out of the running before you even start.
When I was 15, I left school to start a magazine, and it became a success because I wouldn't take no for an answer. I remember banging on James Baldwin's door to ask for an interview when he came to England. Then I got Jean-Paul Sartre's home phone number and asked him to contribute. If I'd been 30, he might have said no, but I was a 15-year-old with passion and he was charmed. Making money was always just a side product of having a good time and creating things nobody'd seen before.
A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.
Good results is not an entitlement. It has to be earned and earned each individual working day via the lens of humility.
He who has infinite patience and infinite energy at his back, will alone succeed.
I feel that I am in a business that is a credit to the womanhood of our race.
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