Booker T. Washington

The great and prevailing idea that seemed to take possession of every one was to prepare himself to lift up the people at his home.

Nearly all had had enough actual contact with the world to teach them the need of education.

As I now recall the scene of my first year, I do not believe that one often has the opportunity of coming into contact with three or four hundred men and women who were so tremendously in earnest as these men and women were.

I was determined from the first to make my work as janitor so valuable that my services would be indispensable.

I learned there for the first time some of its value, not only in keeping the body healthy, but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue.

The history of the world fails to show a higher, purer, and more unselfish class of men and women than those who found their way into those Negro schools.

I have spoken of my admiration for General Armstrong, and yet he was but a type of that Christlike body of men and women who went into the Negro schools at the close of the war by the hundreds to assist in lifting up my race.

He was just as happy in trying to assist some other institution in the South as he was when working for Hampton.

I do not believe he ever had a selfish thought.

I never saw a man who so completely lost sight of himself.

Notwithstanding his affliction, he worked almost constantly night and day for the cause to which he had given his life.

Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things!