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."

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

"Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him."

"Excellence is not an act, but a habit."

"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 overcome."

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

"The most important thing is to do something with your life that will outlive you."

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

"Education is the great equalizer."

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

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

"There is no escape—man can only advance by labouring, by working faithfully and honestly."

"My experience is that the time to move an idea is when the idea is hot."

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

"Cast down your bucket where you are."

"Any individual who owns land and a home of his own is more independent and freer in every way than a man who is not the possessor of these fundamentals."

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

"I have always felt that the true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, but the kind of man the country turns out."

"The man who can do physical work and unite it with the power to think and to plan is bound to succeed."

"Some of the most miserable people I have ever seen are those who are so hard and unyielding in their demands upon others that they have ceased to make any demands upon themselves."

"In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act as though they believe that the disadvantages of a man due to his colour begin and end with him, they are unjust."

"You will find that success comes more readily when you make life worth living for others, as well as for yourself."

"We must be as careful of the future of the Negro race as we would be of the future of any baby."

"I would say that the ability to live and work with other people is just as important as the ability to think."

"The Negro in the South is in a more independent position than the Negro in the North."

"Knowledge is power."

"Do your work so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do no better."

"Let no one postpone his useful deeds."

"I shall always fear God and work hard."

"The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make a living and sustain himself."