Booker T. Washington

Educator

1856-04-05 – 1915-11-14

American educator, author, and orator who became a leading Black intellectual figure in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He founded the Tuskegee Institute and promoted industrial education. He was one of the most influential voices in U.S. education and civil society of his era.

Books by Booker T. Washington

Up from Slavery

An Autobiography
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My larger education
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Frederick Douglass
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Quotes by Booker T. Washington

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.
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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.
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I knew that, in a large degree, we were trying an experiment--that of testing whether or not it was possible for Negroes to build up and control the affairs of a large education institution. I knew that if we failed it wold injure the whole race.
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You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals.
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Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.
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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.
Read quote
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.
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Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.
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I knew that, in a large degree, we were trying an experiment--that of testing whether or not it was possible for Negroes to build up and control the affairs of a large education institution. I knew that if we failed it wold injure the whole race.
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You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals.
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Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
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Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.
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Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
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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.
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There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
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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.
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The last I heard of the young man in question, he was trying to eke out a miserable existence as a book agent while he was looking about for a position somewhere with the Government as a janitor or for some other equally humble occupation.
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This country demands that every race measure itself by the American standard.
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During the next half-century or more, my race must continue passing through the severe American crucible. We are to be tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; our ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all. This, this is the passport to all that is best in the life of our Republic, and the Negro must possess it, or be debarred.
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There is no escape-man drags man down, or man lifts man up.
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