BTW before a crowd (est-1881).


Booker T. orating (ca. 1881)
credit


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

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

Some of these people
do not want the Negro
to lose his grievances
because they do not want
to lose their jobs.

There is a certain class
of race-problem solvers
who don't want the patient
to get well."Booker t. Washington

The Wisdom & Common Sense

of Dr. Booker T. Washington


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

"Great men cultivate love... Only little men cherish a spirit of hatred."
               Booker T. Washington

"I want to see my race live such high and useful lives that
they will not be merely tolerated, but they shall actually be needed
and wanted because of their usefulness to the community."
               Booker T. Washington

"There are two ways of exerting one's strength:
one is pushing down, the other is pulling up."
               Booker T. Washington

"I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him."
               Booker T. Washington

"I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man."
               Booker T. Washington

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

"Success is not measured by the position one has reached in life,
rather by the obstacles overcome while trying to succeed."
               Booker T. Washington

"No race can prosper till it learns
there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."
               Booker T. Washington

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

"A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up."
               Booker T. Washington

"In all my efforts to learn to read, my mother shared fully my ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way she could.
If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother."
               Booker T. Washington

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

"We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law,
but we do want them for our brothers."
               Booker T. Washington

"I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant and unexpected
encouragement, if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day,
and as nearly as possible reaching the high water mark of pure and useful living."
               Booker T. Washington

"We should not permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities."
               Booker T. Washington

"Opportunities never come a second time, nor do they wait for our leisure."
               Booker T. Washington

"No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel
that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life
regardless of his own merits or efforts."
               Booker T. Washington

"No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward."
               Booker T. Washington

"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
               Booker T. Washington

"What we should do in all our schools
is to turn out fewer job seekers and more job-makers.
Any one can seek a job, but it requires a person of rare ability to create a job."
               Booker T. Washington

"In the sight of God there is no color line, and we want to cultivate a spirit
that will make us forget that there is such a line anyway"
               Booker T. Washington

"I do not believe in waiting for the heaven of the future.
If we imitate the life of Christ as nearly as possible,
heaven will come about more and more right here on earth."
               Booker T. Washington

"Leaders have devoted themselves to politics, little knowing, it seems
that political independence disappears without economic independence
that economic independence is the foundation of political independence."
               Booker T. Washington

"I want to see you own land."
               Booker T. Washington

"A whining crying race may be pitied but seldom respected"
               Booker T. Washington

"The Negro has the right to study law, but success will come to the race sooner
if it produces intelligent, thrifty farmers, mechanics, to support the lawyers."
               Booker T. Washington
Copyright © 2008 Booker T. Washington Society, Inc. - a non-profit 501(c)(3) Charitable and Educational Organization