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The circumstances that surround a man's life are not important. How that man responds to those circumstances IS IMPORTANT. His response is the ultimate determining factor between success and failure.

Booker T. Washington

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Booker T. Washington
Age: 59 †
Born: 1856
Born: April 5
Died: 1915
Died: November 14
Autobiographer
Businessperson
Educator
Human Rights Activist
Pedagogue
Politician
Teacher
Writer
Booker Taliaferro Washington
Booker Washington
Ultimate
Failure
Circumstances
Determining
Success
Responds
Important
Factor
Men
Surround
Life
Factors
Response

More quotes by Booker T. Washington

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Whenever your life touches mine, you make me stronger of weaker... there is no escape... people drag others or lift others up.
Booker T. Washington
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The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States of America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.
Booker T. Washington
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I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim Do not get others to do what you can do yourself. My motto on the other hand is Do not do that which others can do as well.
Booker T. Washington
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There is no escape - man drags man down, or man lifts man up.
Booker T. Washington
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The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.
Booker T. Washington
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...those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms [of the rich] do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much sufering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises.
Booker T. Washington
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We must not only become reliable, progressive, skillful and intelligent, but we must keep the idea constantly before our youths that all forms of labor, whether with the hand or head, are honorable.
Booker T. Washington
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There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.
Booker T. Washington
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Success always leaves footprints.
Booker T. Washington
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The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.
Booker T. Washington
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An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.
Booker T. Washington
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No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
Booker T. Washington
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Living is the art of loving. Loving is the art of caring. Caring is the art of sharing. Sharing is the art of living. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
Booker T. Washington
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The negro has within him immense power for self-uplifting, but for years it will be necessary to guide and stimulate him.
Booker T. Washington
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An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
Booker T. Washington
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If you can't read, it's going to be hard to realize dreams.
Booker T. Washington
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We shall prosper as we learn to do the common things of life in an uncommon way. Let down your buckets where you are.
Booker T. Washington
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There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.
Booker T. Washington
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The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your 'civilization'.
Booker T. Washington
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We don't just borrow words on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
Booker T. Washington