189 Quotes by Booker T. Washington

In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. 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 while trying to succeed.

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

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

Those who have accomplished the greatest results are those who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient, and polite.

Success is not to be measured by the position someone has reached in life, but the obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed.

Of my father I know even less than of my mother. I do not even know his name. I have heard reports to the effect that he was a white man who lived on one of the near-by plantations. Whoever he was, I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing in any way for my rearing. But I do not find especial fault with him. He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time.

The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States of America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.

I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.

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