Booker T. Washington

No man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual, and moral well-being of the place in which he lives is long left without proper reward.

I think that the whole future of my race hinges on the question as to whether or not it can make itself of such indispensable value that the people in the town and the state where we reside will feel that our presence is necessary to the…

In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not long keep the world from what it wants.

As I have said, I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of…

I never knew, before visiting Holland, how much it was possible for people to get out of a small plot of ground.

It was such an unusual feeling to wake up in the morning and realize that I had no engagements; did not have to take a train at a certain hour; did not have an appointment to meet some one, or to make an address, at a certain hour.

It was the first time in all those years that I had felt, even in a measure, free from care; and my feeling of relief it is hard to describe on paper.

As soon as the last good-bys were said, and the steamer had cut loose from the wharf, the load of care, anxiety, and responsibility which I had carried for eighteen years began to lift itself from my shoulders at the rate, it seemed to me…

It is an inspiring sight when one stands on the platform there and sees before him eleven or twelve hundred earnest young men and women; and one cannot but feel that it is a privilege to help to guide them to a higher and more useful life.

It is such a rest and relief to get away from crowds of people, and handshaking, and travelling, to get home, even if it be for but a very brief while.

The thing in my life which brings me the keenest regret is that my work in connection with public affairs keeps me for so much of the time away from my family, where, of all places in the world, I delight to be.

I pity the man or woman who has never learned to enjoy nature and to get strength and inspiration out of it.