Booker T. Washington: “Now one great mistake that we make in striving to reach these things is that we keep putting off beginning.”

Before the end of the year, I think I began learning that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

When freedom came, the slaves were almost as well fitted to begin life anew as the master, except in the matter of book-learning and ownership of property.

The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority.

In order to defend and protect the women and children who were left on the plantations when the white males went to war, the slaves would have laid down their lives.