All quotes

Cast down your bucket where you are.

It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what colour of skin merit is found.

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

The Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements, and temptations to battle with that are little known to those not situated as he is.

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

At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.

From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life had been occupied in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be a more useful man if I had had time for sports.

I will not say that I became discouraged, for as I now look back over my life I do not recall that I ever became discouraged over anything that I set out to accomplish.

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

My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own.

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

I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot 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

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings.

Ever since then I have had no patience with any school for my race in the South which did not teach its students the dignity of labour.

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

I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

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

If we would be great, and good, and useful, we must pay the price. And remember that when we get down to the fundamental principles of truth, nature draws no colour line.

The point is, that we want to be constantly on the lookout for ways of improving whatever work we are engaged in, whether that work be milking cows or doing something else.

Very many people, very many students, who otherwise would succeed, who would go through school creditably, graduating with honours, have failed to succeed because they became discouraged.

I want you to make up your minds that you are going to be more nearly perfect, are going to put more manly and womanly strength into the preparation of your lessons each day, that you may be more useful.

Make up your minds that you are going to overcome every discouragement, and that you are not going to let any discouragement overcome you.