I want you to bear in mind that your text books, with all their contents, are not an end, but a means to an end, a means to help us get the highest, the best, the purest and the most beautiful things out of life.
Washington stresses that textbooks are tools to achieve greater life goals, not the ultimate objective.
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More from Booker T. Washington
I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race.
Even the most ignorant members of my race on the remote plantations felt in their hearts, with a certainty that admitted of no doubt, that the freedom of the slaves would be the one great result of the war, if the Northern armies conquered.
The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.