Booker T. Washington quotes for UPSC

There is no power on earth, that can neutralize the influence of a high, pure, simple and useful life.

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man. It is more important that we be prepared for voting than that we vote, more important that we be prepared to hold office than that we hold office, more important that we be prepared for the highest recognition than that we be recognized.

I think I have learned that the best way to lift one's self up is to help someone else.

There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.

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

In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever, in any country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists.

Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work.

The world cares very little what you or I know, but it does care a great deal about what you or I do.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.