Booker T. Washington

I have a strong feeling that every individual owes it to himself, and to the cause which he is serving, to keep a vigorous, healthy body, with the nerves steady and strong, prepared for great efforts and prepared for disappointments and…

This force is so organized and subdivided that the machinery of the school goes on day by day like clockwork.

One of the most encouraging signs in connection with the Tuskegee school is found in the fact that the organization is so thorough that the daily work of the school is not dependent upon the presence of any one individual.

The number of people who stand ready to consume one’s time, to no purpose, is almost countless.

They usually have some process for curing all of the ills of the world at once.

I said that I did not think it was necessary for me to go into extended explanations; if my seventeen years of work in the heart of the South had not been explanation enough, I did not see how words could explain.

In this letter I said that I had made it a rule never to say before a Northern audience anything that I would not say before an audience in the South.

The part of the speech which seems to arouse the wildest and most sensational enthusiasm was that in which I thanked the President for his recognition of the Negro in his appointments during the Spanish-American war.

One might take up the life of the worst element in New York City, for example, and prove almost anything he wanted to prove concerning the white man, but all will agree that this is not a fair test.

No one can come into contact with the race for twenty years, as I have done in the heart of the South, without being convinced that the race is constantly making slow but sure progress materially, educationally, and morally.

There never was a baser falsehood uttered concerning a race, or a statement made that was less capable of being proved by actual facts.

I have taken pains to go to the bottom of things and get facts, in a cold, business-like manner.