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

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

Character is power.
Booker T. Washington

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.
Booker T. Washington

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

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

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

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

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

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


If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
Booker T. Washington

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
Booker T. Washington