Booker T. Washington

I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time.

It takes a very good and a very bright teacher to say, "I don't know."

She was kneeling over me, fervently praying as was her custom to do, that some day she and her children might be free.

And my foremost aim in going to school was to learn ways and means by which I might make life more endurable, and if possible even attractive, for my mother.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.

If we cannot turn out a man here who is capable of taking care of a pig sty, how can we expect him to take care of affairs of State?

It was about as near to Nowhere as any locality gets to be, so far as I can learn.

When I saw and realised that all this was a creation of my own hands, my whole nature began to change.

I did not mean to inconvenience anybody. I simply meant to reach that schoolhouse in time.

You eat for one, you drink for one, and you sleep for one; and so you will have to count for one if you are going to stay here.

It is not every school boy who has the privilege of choosing his own name.

I soon learned that there was a great difference between studying about things and studying the things themselves, between book instruction and the illumination of practical experience.

I think there are not many men in our country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that I have.

If you want to be happy, if you want to live a contented life, if you want to live a life of genuine pleasure, do something for somebody else.

I always had the feeling that if I could get knowledge in my head the matter of clothing would take care of itself afterwards.

In my opinion we cannot begin at the top to build a race, any more than we can begin at the top to build a house.

I was one of the happiest souls on Earth. The sweeping of that room was my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction.

Character is a power.

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 overcome while trying to succeed.

If a thing is not well done, it is poorly done.