Booker T. Washington

I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim, “Do not get others to do what you can do yourself.” My motto on the other hand is, “Do not do that which others can do as well.”

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

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

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

Tell them that the sacrifice was not in vain. Tell them that by way of the shop, the field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift and economy, by way of industrial school and college, we are coming. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up. Often through oppression, unjust discrimination, and prejudice, but through them, we are coming up. And with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power on earth that can permanently stay our progress.

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

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

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.

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

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.