Top 150 Booker T. Washington Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Let our opportunities overshadow our grievances.”

— Booker T. Washington

102. “The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for-and dying for, if need be-is the opportunity of making someone else more happy.”

— Booker T. Washington

103. “From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.”

— Booker T. Washington

104. “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.”

— Booker T. Washington

105. “No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.”

— Booker T. Washington

106. “Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.”

— Booker T. Washington

107. “My whole life has largely been one of surprises.”

— Booker T. Washington

108. “I never liked the atmosphere of Washington. I early saw that it was impossible to build up a race of which the leaders were spending most of their time, thought and energy in trying to get into office, or in trying to stay there after they were in.”

— Booker T. Washington

109. “In proportion as one renders service he becomes great.”

— Booker T. Washington

110. “I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”

— Booker T. Washington

111. “I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value.”

— Booker T. Washington

112. “I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.”

— Booker T. Washington

113. “Many strikes and similar disturbances might be avoided if the employers would cultivate the habit of getting nearer to their employees, of consulting and advising with them, and letting them feel that the interests of the two are the same.”

— Booker T. Washington

114. “A life is not worth much of which it cannot be said, when it comes to its close, that it was helpful to humanity.”

— Booker T. Washington

115. “Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things!”

— Booker T. Washington

116. “They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.”

— Booker T. Washington

117. “Each one should remember there is a chance for him.”

— Booker T. Washington

118. “The study of art that does not result in making the strong less willing to suppress the weak means little.”

— Booker T. Washington

119. “Every person who has grown to any degree of usefulness, every person who has grown to distinction, almost without exception has been a person who has risen by overcoming obstacles, by removing difficulties, by resolving that when he met discouragements he would not give up. Make up your minds that you are going to overcome every discouragement, and that you are not going to let any discouragement overcome you. Those.”

— Booker T. Washington

120. “From his example in this respect I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak. It is now long ago that I learned this lesson from General Armstrong, and resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”

— Booker T. Washington

121. “At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour’s own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.”

— Booker T. Washington

122. “When one takes a broad survey of the country, he will find that the most useful and influential people in it are those who take the deepest interest in institutions that exist for the purpose of making the world better.”

— Booker T. Washington

123. “The real trouble with the newspapers is that while they frequently exhibit the average man at his worst, they rarely show him at his best. In order to read the best about the average man we must still go to books or to magazines.”

— Booker T. Washington

124. “Before the end of the year, I think I began learning that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”

— Booker T. Washington

125. “In dealing with newspaper people, whether they are white or black, there is no way of getting their sympathy and support like that of actually knowing the individual men, of meeting and talking with them frequently and frankly, and of keeping them in touch with everything you do or intend to do.”

— Booker T. Washington

126. “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.”

— Booker T. Washington

127. “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.”

— Booker T. Washington

128. “I have referred to this unpleasant part of the history of the South simply for the purpose of calling attention to the great change that has taken place since the days of the “Ku Klux.” To-day there are no such organizations in the South, and the fact that such ever existed is almost forgotten by both races. There are few places in the South now where public sentiment would permit such organizations to exist. Chapter.”

— Booker T. Washington

129. “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.”

— Booker T. Washington

130. “The thing that impressed itself most on me in Holland was the thoroughness of the agriculture and the excellence of the Holstein cattle. I.”

— Booker T. Washington

131. “One of the highest and surest signs of civilization is that a people have learned to obey the commands of those who are placed over them.”

— Booker T. Washington

132. “Cast down your bucket where you are.”

— Booker T. Washington

133. “It is pretty hard, however, to help a young man who has started wrong. Once he gets the idea that – because he has crammed his head full with mere book knowledge – the world owes him a living, it is hard for him to change.”

— Booker T. Washington

134. “In all my teaching I have watched carefully the influence of the tooth-brush, and I am convinced that there are few single agencies of civilization that are more far-reaching.”

— Booker T. Washington

135. “My experience teaches me that if a man has little or no influence with those by whose side he lives, as a rule there is something wrong with him.”

— Booker T. Washington

136. “The one thing that is most worth living for – and dying for, if need be – is the opportunity of making some one else more happy and more useful.”

— Booker T. Washington

137. “My experience with them, as well as other events in my life, convince me that the thing to do, when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing, and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.”

— Booker T. Washington

138. “The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority. Hence labour was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape.”

— Booker T. Washington

139. “The ministry was the profession that suffered most – and still suffers, though there has been great improvement – on account of not only ignorant but in many cases immoral men who claimed that they were “called to preach.”

— Booker T. Washington

140. “It is discouraging to find a woman who knows much about theoretical chemistry, and who cannot properly wash and iron a shirt.”

— Booker T. Washington

141. “In all my acquaintance with General Armstrong I never heard him speak, in public or in private, a single bitter word against the white man in the South. From his example in this respect I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.”

— Booker T. Washington

142. “My experience in getting money for Tuskegee has taught me to have no patience with those people who are always condemning the rich because they are rich, and because they do not give more to objects of charity.”

— Booker T. Washington

143. “There are those among the white race and those among the black race who assert, with a good deal of earnestness, that there is no difference between the white man and the black man in this country. This sounds very pleasant and tickles the fancy; but, when the test of hard, cold logic is applied to it, it must be acknowledged that there is a difference, – not an inherent one, not a racial one, but a difference growing out of unequal opportunities in the past.”

— Booker T. Washington

144. “The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women. Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things!”

— Booker T. Washington

145. “In the earlier days of freedom almost every coloured man who learned to read would receive “a call to preach” within a few days after he began reading.”

— Booker T. Washington

146. “To do the most that lies in you, you must go with a heart and head full of hope and faith in the world, believing that there is work for you to do, believing that you are the person to accomplish that work, and the one who is going to accomplish it.”

— Booker T. Washington

147. “Mr. Clark Howell, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, telegraphed to a New York paper, among other words, the following, “I do not exaggerate when I say that Professor Booker T. Washington’s address yesterday was one of the most notable speeches, both as to character and as to the warmth of its reception, ever delivered to a Southern audience. The address was a revelation. The whole speech is a platform upon which blacks and whites can stand with full justice to each other.”

— Booker T. Washington

148. “Then very few persons have any idea of the large number of applications for help that rich people are constantly being flooded with.”

— Booker T. Washington

149. “I have often heard persons condemned for not giving away money, who, to my own knowledge, were giving away thousands of dollars every year so quietly that the world knew nothing about it.”

— Booker T. Washington

150. “If you are milking cows and feel that you know all that there is to be known about it, you have simply reached the point where you are useless and unfitted for the work.”

— Booker T. Washington