Quotes about Progress

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

In all things that are purely social we [black and white] can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

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.

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

The wisest among my race understand that agitations of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.

A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up.

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.

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. Looked

Success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

If you are milking cows and feel that you know all that there is to be known about it, you have simply reached the point where you are useless and unfitted for the work.

In a large degree it has been the pennies, the nickels, and the dimes which have come from the Sunday-schools, the Christian Endeavour societies, and the missionary societies, as well as from the church proper, that have helped to elevate the Negro at so rapid a rate.

that this was the first time in the entire history of the Negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the same platform with white Southern men and women on any important National occasion. I was asked now to speak to an audience composed of the wealth and culture of the white South, the representatives of my former masters.