Booker T. Washington

This was my first experience in finding out what the colour of my skin meant.

My whole soul was so bent upon reaching Hampton that I did not have time to cherish any bitterness toward the hotel-keeper.

If the people who gave the money to provide that building could appreciate the influence the sight of it had upon me, as well as upon thousands of other youths, they would feel all the more encouraged to make such gifts.

I felt that a new kind of existence had now begun—that life would now have a new meaning.

I felt that I had reached the promised land, and I resolved to let no obstacle prevent me from putting forth the highest effort to fit myself to accomplish the most good in the world.

I had the feeling that in a large measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher in the cleaning of that room.

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.

I have passed several examinations since then, but I have always felt that this was the best one I ever passed.

The young men and women were determined to secure an education at any cost.

One might have removed from Hampton all the buildings, class-rooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General Armstrong, and that alone would have been a liberal…

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.

In the economy of God there is but one standard by which an individual can succeed—there is but one for a race.