Booker T. Washington

I wish that you could know how many prayers they send up, day after day, that your school life may be more and more successful as one day succeeds another, that you may grow to be successful, studious, strong men and women, who will…

I wish that you might realize, perhaps as you have never realized before, how anxious they are that you should succeed here.

We cannot get upon our feet, as a people, until we learn the saving habit; until we learn to save every nickel, every dime and every dollar that we can spare.

You will find that the savings banks of New England, and of all countries that are prosperous, are filled with the dollars of poor people, dollars aggregating millions in all.

The civilization of New England and of other such prosperous regions rests more, perhaps, upon the savings banks of the country than upon any other one thing.

I wonder how many of you, five years from now, will have fifteen hundred dollars in the bank or in some other safe kind of property.

If you earn five dollars a week, put two dollars in the bank.

Resolve that no matter how little you may earn, you will put a part of the money in the bank.

I like to see people comfortably and neatly dressed; but there is no sadder sight than to see young men and women yielding to the temptation to spend all they earn upon clothes.

When you are asked to go to drive by such a man as that, tell him you would rather he would put his money in the bank, because you know he is not able to afford to spend it in that way.

A man who goes driving on a salary of four dollars a week cannot own a home or possess a bank account.

It makes one sick at heart, as he goes into the cities, to see young men on Sunday afternoons paying two or three dollars for a hack or carriage to take young women out to drive, when in too many cases the men do not earn a salary of more…