Booker T. Washington

"I have tried to make my life stand for something more than the mere accumulation of material possessions."

"The individual who can do something that the world wants done is bound to make a living for himself and everybody else."

"Excellence is not a destination; it is a continuous journey that never ends."

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

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

"Character, not circumstances, makes the person."

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."

"Poverty and ignorance are the two greatest enemies of mankind."

"We do not want to live anywhere as exiles or vagrants."

"A man may be very intelligent and yet be miserable unless he has something that appeals to his heart."

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

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

"The moment we cease to rely upon the power that lies within us for our salvation, that moment we sign, so to speak, our own death warrant."

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

"In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

"The individual who uses his education to develop his power of thought rather than to impress the world is the one who is truly educated."

"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."

"You cannot keep a man down without staying down with him."

"The time when one's education is finished is often when one's real education begins."

"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public mind."

"When you allow a man to feel that you trust him, you breathe into him a desire and determination to justify that trust."

"Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company."

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."

"The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men."

"A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them."

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

"Cast down your bucket where you are."

"In the long run, the world is going to have more or less all that it deserves."

"I believe that the whole future of my race depends on the conduct of the colored young people of today."

"My early troubles were not the result of my color but of my lack of education and training."