Booker T. Washington

I care for it only as a means to be used for doing good, just as wealth may be used.

I have often said to my friends that if I can use whatever prominence may have come to me as an instrument with which to do good, I am content to have it.

I have always looked upon fame as something to be used in accomplishing good.

I pity the man, black or white, who has never experienced the joy and satisfaction that come to one by reason of an effort to assist in making some one else more useful and more happy.

I believe that any man’s life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day of his life—that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly as possible the high-water…

And yet there are people who are bold enough to say that race feeling in America is not growing less intense!

When the Englishman takes you into his heart and friendship, he binds you there as with cords of steel, and I do not believe that there are many other friendships that are so lasting or so satisfactory.

Another thing that impressed itself upon me throughout England was the high regard that all classes have for law and order, and the ease and thoroughness with which everything is done.

The English servant expects, as a rule, to be nothing but a servant, and so he perfects himself in the art to a degree that no class of servants in America has yet reached.

In one thing, at least, I feel sure that the English are ahead of Americans, and that is, that they have learned how to get more out of life.

I talked with him about Africa and its relation to the American Negro, and after my interview with him I became more convinced than ever that there was no hope of the American Negro’s improving his condition by emigrating to Africa.

In fact, when I left France, I had more faith in the future of the black man in America than I had ever possessed.