More from and about
Booker T. Washington
(biographical info at bottom of page)

  

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached
in life as by the obstacles which one has overcome while trying to succeed.

   

I want to see my race live such high and useful lives that they will not be merely tolerated, but they shall actually be needed and wanted because of their usefulness to the community.

      
I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement, if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day, and as nearly as possible reaching the high water mark of pure and useful living.
  
The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for--and dying for, if need be--is the opportunity of making someone else more happy.


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.
  
  
I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.
   

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

     

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

   

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It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours,
but it is vastly more important that we be prepared
for the exercise of those privileges.

   

In order to be successful in any undertaking, I think the main
thing is for one to grow to the point where one completely forgets
him or herself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause.  In
proportion as one loses himself in this way, in the same degree
does one get the highest happiness out of his or her work.

   

We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.

   

    

Booker T. Washington recalled his childhood in his autobiography, Up From Slavery.  He was born in 1856 on the Burroughs tobacco farm which, despite its small size, he always referred to as a "plantation."  His mother was a cook, his father a white man from a nearby farm.  "The early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin," he wrote, "were not very different from those of other slaves."

He went to school in Franklin County--not as a student, but to carry books for one of James Burroughs's daughters.  It was illegal to educate slaves. "I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study would be about the same as getting into paradise," he wrote.  In April, 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation was read to joyful slaves in front of the Burroughs home.  Booker's family soon left to join his stepfather in Malden, West Virginia.  The young boy took a job in a salt mine that began at 4 a.m. so he could attend school later in the day.  Within a few years, Booker was taken in as a houseboy by a wealthy towns-woman who further encouraged his longing to learn.  At age 16, he walked much of the 500 miles back to Virginia to enroll in a new school for black students.  He knew that even poor students could get an education at Hampton Institute, paying their way by working.  The head teacher was suspicious of his country ways and ragged clothes.  She admitted him only after he had cleaned a room to her satisfaction.

In one respect he had come full circle, back to earning his living by menial tasks.  Yet his entrance to Hampton led him away from a life of forced labor for good.  He became an instructor there.  Later, as principal and guiding force behind Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which he founded in 1881, he became recognized as the nation's foremost black educator.

Washington the public figure often invoked his own past to illustrate his belief in the dignity of work.  "There was no period of my life that was devoted to play," Washington once wrote.  "From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life has been occupied in some kind of labor."  This concept of self-reliance born of hard work was the cornerstone of Washington's social philosophy.

As one of the most influential black men of his time, Washington was not without his critics.  Many charged that his conservative approach undermined the quest for racial equality.  "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers," he proposed to a biracial audience in his 1895 Atlanta Compromise address, "yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."  In part, his methods arose for his need for support from powerful whites, some of them former slave owners.  It is now known, however, that Washington secretly funded antisegregationist activities.  He never wavered in his belief in freedom: "From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom.  This is not true.  I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery."

By the last years of his life, Washington had moved away from many of his accommodationist policies.  Speaking out with a new frankness, Washington attacked racism.  In 1915 he joined ranks with former critics to protest the stereotypical portrayal of blacks in a new movie, "Birth of a Nation."  Some months later he died at age 59.  A man who overcame near-impossible odds himself, Booker T. Washington is best remembered for helping black Americans rise up from the economic slavery that held them down long after they were legally free citizens.

   

    

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Other people:  Alan Watts - Albert Einstein - Albert Schweitzer - Andy Rooney - Anne Frank - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Wilson Schaef
- Annie Dillard - Anthony Robbins - Ari Kiev - Artur Rubenstein - Barbara Johnson - Benjamin Disraeli
Benjamin Franklin
- Benjamin Hoff - Bernie Siegel - Bertrand Russell - Betty Eadie - Booker T. Washington
Charlotte Davis Kasl
- Cheryl Richardson - Cristina Feldman - C.S. Lewis - the Dalai Lama - Dale Carnegie - Deepak Chopra
Don Miguel Ruiz
- Earl Nightingale - Elaine St. James - Eleanor Roosevelt - Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emmet Fox
- Frederick Buechner - George Bernard Shaw - George Santayana - George Washington Carver - Gerald Jampolsky
Harold Kushner
- Harry Emerson Fosdick - Helen Keller - Henry David Thoreau - Henry James - Henry Van Dyke
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Henry Ward Beecher - Hugh Prather - Immanuel Kant - Iyanla Vanzant - Jack Canfield
James Allen
- Jennifer James - Jim Rohn - Joan Borysenko - Joan Chittister - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - John Izzo
John Ruskin
- Joni Eareckson Tada - Joseph M. Marshall III - Julia Cameron - Kent Nerburn - Khalil Gibran
Leo Buscaglia
- Leonard Jacobson - Leslie Levine - Lucinda Bassett - Lydia Maria Child - Lynn Grabhorn - Marcus Aurelius
Marianne Williamson
- Martin Luther King, Jr. - Maya Angelou - Melody Beattie - Michael Goddart - Mitch Albom
Mohandas Gandhi
- Morrie Schwartz - Mother Teresa - M. Scott Peck - Nathaniel Branden - Nikos Kazantzakis - Norman Cousins
Norman Vincent Peale
- Og Mandino - Oprah Winfrey - Oriah - Orison Swett Marden - Pau Casals - Peace Pilgrim - Phillips Brooks
Rabindranath Tagore
- Rachel Carson - Rachel Naomi Remen - Rainer Maria Rilke - Ralph Waldo Trine - Richard Bach
Richard Carlson
- Robert Frost - Robert Fulghum - Robert Louis Stevenson - Russell Baker - Sarah Ban Breathnach
Shakti Gawain
- Soren Kierkegaard - Stephen Covey - Stephen C. Paul - Sue Patton Thoele - Susan L. Taylor
Sylvia Boorstein
- Thich Nhat Hanh - Thomas Carlyle - Thomas Kinkade - Thomas Merton - Tom Walsh - Victor Cherbuliez
Wayne Dyer
- Wilferd A. Peterson - Willa Cather - William James - William Wordsworth - Zig Ziglar

   

       
    

Yes, life can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's actually rather dependable and reliable.  Some principles apply to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning.  I use it a lot when I teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.  What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or generous, compassionate or arrogant?  In this book, I've done my best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life, writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.  Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too!
Universal Principles of Living Life Fully.  Awareness of these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration out of the lives we lead.