Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to multiple presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Washington was a key proponent of African-American businesses and one of the founders of the National Negro Business League. His base was the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college he founded in Tuskegee, Alabama. As lynchings in the South reached a peak in 1895, Washington gave a speech, known as the “Atlanta compromise”, which brought him national fame. He called for black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South. (via Wikipedia)
A few of his great quotes are listed below:
On Life:
Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.
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.
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.
On Success:
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 had to overcome while trying to succeed.
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.
I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed. And I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.
We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
Success always leaves footprints.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached in life as by the obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed.
You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals.
In order to be successful in any undertaking. I think the main thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause. In proportion as one loses himself in this way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness out of his work.
On Slavery:
You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
There are two ways of exerting one’s strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
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.
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.
It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours. But it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges.
I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
Great men cultivate love and only little men cherish a spirit of hatred; assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.
Other Quotes:
In my contact with people, I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books. Who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to permit them to come into contact with other souls with the great outside world.
Character is power.
The world cares little about what a man knows;it cares more about what a man is able to do.
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.