Character and Excellence: Wise Words from Booker T. Washington

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” This encapsulates the life philosophy of the great American whose birth we celebrate today, Booker T. Washington.

Washington had been born into slavery, yet he believed, once free, he could overcome any obstacle. He faced harsh racism, but refused to hate or resent anyone. He dreamed of unity and prosperity for men of every racial and social background in an America that truly had justice for all.

A brief summary of Washington’s life from Biography.com:

“Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington put himself through school and became a teacher after the Civil War. In 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama (now known as Tuskegee University), which grew immensely and focused on training African Americans in agricultural pursuits. A political adviser and writer, Washington clashed with intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois over the best avenues for racial uplift.”

Washington believed in personal responsibility and allowing black Americans to make their own way through hard work and better education. Radical socialist DuBois wanted a lot more government involvement. I think it’s pretty clear history has vindicated Washington’s view and shown the disastrous consequences of DuBois’s ideology.

Below are some inspiring quotes from the great American Booker T. Washington:

“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

“A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a majority.”

“Character, not circumstance, makes the person.”

“Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.”

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

“Among a large class, there seemed to be a dependence upon the government for every conceivable thing. The members of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the federal officials to create one for them. How many times I wished then and have often wished since, that by some power of magic, I might remove the great bulk of these people into the country districts and plant them upon the soil – upon the solid and never deceptive foundation of Mother Nature, where all nations and races that have ever succeeded have gotten their start – a start that at first may be slow and toilsome, but one that nevertheless is real.”

“Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”

“You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.”

“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.”

In conclusion, I would like to share the opening of Washington’s speech on Abraham Lincoln, showing clearly his dreams of a society where racism was conquered and white and black Americans alike uplifted:

“You ask one whom the Great Emancipator found a piece of property and left an American citizen to speak of Abraham Lincoln. My first acquaintance with our hero and benefactor is this: Night after night, before the dawn of day, on an old slave plantation in Virginia, I recall the form of my sainted mother, bending over a batch of rags that enveloped my body, on a dirt floor, breathing a fervent prayer to Heaven that “Marsa Lincoln” might succeed, and that one day she and I might be free; and so, on your invitation, I come here to-night to celebrate with you the answer to those prayers. But be it far from me to revive the bitter memories of the past, nor would I narrow the work of Abraham Lincoln to the black race of this county; rather would I call him the Emancipator of America—the liberator of the white man North, of the white man South; the one who, in unshackling the chains of the Negro, has turned loose the enslaved forces of nature in the South, and has knit all sections of our country together by the indissoluble bonds of commerce.”