Quotes by Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

American Black Leader and Educator

Alive from: 1856-1915

Quotes 1 till 15 of 35.

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

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  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.

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  Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work.
  Source: Up From Slavery (1901) ch. XII

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  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.
  Source: An Address on Abraham Lincoln before the Republican Club of New York City (1909)

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  The world cares very little what you or I know, but it does care a great deal about what you or I do.
  Source: Speech in Boston, 30-7-1903

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

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  There is another class of colored 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.
  Source: My Larger Education: Being Chapters from My Experience (1911)

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

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  To those of my race 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'—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.
  Source: Address at Atlanta International Exposition, Atlanta, Ga., 18 September 1895

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

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  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.

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  We shall prosper as we learn to do the common things of life in an uncommon way. Let down your buckets where you are.

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  Wherever our life touches yours, we help or hinder... wherever your life touches ours, you make us stronger or weaker.... There is no escape - man drags man down, or man lifts man up.

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

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