Booker T. Washington Top 10 Quotes

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.

Booker T. Washington (Up From Slavery - Chapter 4, 1901)

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

Booker T. Washington (Up From Slavery - Chapter 11, 1901)

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

Booker T. Washington (The Story of My Life and Work, 1900)

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 (Up From Slavery - Chapter 17, 1901)

The world cares very little what you or I know, but it does care a great deal about what you or I do.

Booker T. Washington (Speech at a church in Boston, Massachusetts, 1903)

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

Booker T. Washington (Speech on Abraham Lincoln in New York, 1909)

Character, not circumstance, makes the person.

Booker T. Washington (Speech in Brooklyn, New York, 1896)

The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.

Booker T. Washington (Up From Slavery - Chapter 13, 1901)

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 (Speech in Atlanta - The Atlanta Exposition Address, 1895)

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached in life as by the obstacles which one has overcome while trying to succeed.

Booker T. Washington (Up From Slavery - Chapter 2, 1901)