Booker T Washington on Character and on That Which Is Worth Having

Today is the birthday of Booker T. Washington, the American educator (1856-1915) whose ideas and viewpoints would hardly endear him to today's masses of Europe:

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

Character is power.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate 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. Out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.

The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.

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.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

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