Academics From The United States

"The vast majority of Negros are members of or associated with either the Baptist Church or the several branches of the Methodist Church. ... So strong has been their allegiance to these two denominations that Dr. Booker T. Washington used to say, with his characteristic humor, that if ever you discovered a Negro who was not either a Baptist or a Methodist, some white man had been tampering with his religion."

"For a hundred years since emancipation, Negroes had searched tor the elusive path to freedom. They knew that they had to fashion a body of tactics suitable for their unique and special conditions. The words of the Constitution had declared them free, but life had told them that they were a twice-burdened people—they lived in the lowest stratum of society, and within it they were additionally imprisoned by a caste of color. For decades the long and winding trails led to dead ends. Booker T. Washington, in the dark days that followed Reconstruction, advised them: “Let down your buckets where you are.” Be content, he said in effect, with doing well what the times permit you to do at all. However, this path, they soon felt, had too little freedom in its present and too little promise in its future."

"Before embarking on his illustrious career as an educator and activist, Booker T. Washington, the son of enslaved parents, spent part of his childhood working in the salt furnaces of the Kanawha Salines. "Though I was a mere child, my stepfather put me and my brother at work in one of the furnaces," he explained in his autobiography. "Often I began work as early as four o'clock in the morning." At the time, Washington was nine years old."

"Historical and contemporary judgments affirm that Washington was in reality “a great accommodator.” But to create Tuskegee in Alabama in that era he could hardly have been otherwise. He did create Tuskegee—a splendid achievement—but, in so doing, was in turn almost forced to create of himself an image of national leadership. But in time, he grew to like this image and eventually to take advantage of it, so his enemies claimed, for the exercise of power itself. As a bridge between the white and colored peoples of the United States, he sought and gained more often than not the favors of the white power structure from which came the endowments supporting Tusekegee."

"His modesty, his patience, his forbearance, are sublime."

"What strikes you, first and last, in Mr. Washington is his constant common sense. He has lived heroic poetry, and he can, therefore, afford to talk simple prose. Simple prose it is, but of sterling worth, and such as it is a pleasure to listen to as long as he chooses to talk. It is interfused with the sweet, brave humor which qualifies his writing, and which enables him, like Dunbar, to place himself outside his race, when he wishes to see it as others see it, and to report its exterior effect from his interior knowledge."

"There is nothing more touching in his book than the passages which record her devotion and her constant endeavor to help him find the way so dark to her. There is nothing more beautiful and uplifting in literature than the tender reverence, the devout honor with which he repays her affection. His birth was a part of slavery, and she was, in his eyes, as blameless for its conditions as if it had all the sanctions. The patience, the fearless frankness, with which he accepts and owns the facts, are not less than noble; and it is not to their white fathers, but to their black mothers, that such men as Fredrick Douglass and Booker Washington justly ascribe what is best in their natures."

"We are a people born of many peoples. Our culture, our skills, our very aspirations have been shaped by immigrants—and their sons and daughters—from all the earth. Sam Gompers from England, Andrew Carnegie from Scotland, Albert Einstein from Germany—and Booker T. Washington and Al Smith—Marconi and Caruso—men of all nations and races and estates—they have made us what we are."

"So thoroughly did he learn the speech and thought of triumphal commercialism, and the ideals of material prosperity, that the picture of a lone black boy poring over a French grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to him the acme of absurdities. One wonders what Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi would say to this."

"I have for some years had the pleasure of Mr. Booker Washington's acquaintance, and I share with all those who know the facts the appreciation of the services he has rendered and is rendering to the solution of one of the gravest and most perplexing problems of our time. He is a man who, in every sense, deserves well of his contemporaries, and I believe that, when hereafter the story is written of Christian people's endeavour in our day to atone for and to amend the racial wrongdoings of the past, Mr. Booker Washington's name will stand in the very forefront of those for whom the world will give thanks."

"Booker Washington is the combined Moses and Joshua of his people. Not only has he led them to the promised land, but still lives to teach them by example and precept how properly to enjoy it."

"Washington, unlike many other Black leaders of his time was a frequent traveler in the Deep South who knew the conditions firsthand instead of the abstract. Washington was a witness to the violence and racism of Jim Crow in the Black Belt and lived beside desperate poverty and illiteracy. Because of the paradoxical nature of being both a pragmatic realist and a utopian separatist, Washington sometimes expressed conflicting and ambiguous positions on issues."

"Washington performed on the world stage as a moral charismatic leader representing African Americans. Some strongly believe he failed in that role; others believe that he succeeded against the odds. Some believe he was a trickster and self-made man; others firmly believe he was tricked and was a "made-man" by white power brokers. Whatever one's position, it is undeniable that Washington was an influential educational, business, cultural and political leader. He certainly had all the basics of leadership: a vision, a means of implementing the vision, and the enthusiasm of followers."

"He was a thinker rooted in the Bible and Shakespeare, a lover of epigrams, a teller of folksy tales, a prodigious writer, and theatrical in his method of inspiring crowds."

"Booker T. Washington advised, networked, cut deals, made threats, pressured, punished enemies, rewarded friends, greased palms, manipulated the media, signed autographs, read minds with the skill of a master psychologist, strategized, raised money, always knew where the camera was pointing, traveled with an entourage, waved the flag with patriotic speeches, and claimed to have no interest in partisan politics. In other words, he was an artful politician. He was not a lawyer, scholar, college-bred man, or a military hero. But he knew how to use the power of symbolism through the lens of a storyteller."

"Almost everything Washington said or did was shot through with a certain irony. He bowed before the prejudices of the meanest Southerner, but he moved in circles in the North which were closed to all but a few white men. He told Negroes that Jim Crow was irrelevant, but he himself violated the law by riding first class in Pullman cars with Southern white men and women. And irony of ironies: he who advised Negroes to forget about politics wielded more political power than any other Negro in American history."

"Now Washington is a great and good man, a Christian statesman, and take him all in all the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in a hundred years; but he is not a typical negro."

"There is trouble in the White House More than you can tell; Yelling like wild men, Niggers raising hell.I see a way to settle it Just as clear as water, Let Mr. Booker Washington Marry Teddy's daughter."

"Opportunity is like a bald-headed man with only a patch of hair right in front. You have to grab that hair, grasp the opportunity while it's confronting you, else you'll be grasping a slick bald head."

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

"I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public. My experience is that people who call themselves "The Intellectuals" understand theories, but they do not understand things. I have long been convinced that, if these men could have gone into the South and taken up and become interested in some practical work which would have brought them in touch with people and things, the whole world would have looked very different to them. Bad as conditions might have seemed at first, when they saw that actual progress was being made, they would have taken a more hopeful view of the situation."

"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."

"My whole life has largely been one of surprises. I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day of his life — that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful living."

"The American states have gone far in assisting the progress of truth; but they have stopped short of perfection. They ought to have given every honest citizen an equal right to enjoy his religion and an equal title to all civil emoluments, without obliging him to tell his religion. Every interference of the civil power in regulating opinion, is an impious attempt to take the business of the Deity out of his own hands; and every preference given to any religious denomination, is so far slavery and bigotry."

"There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors."

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."

"In 2008, the United States suffered the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, when Wall Street collapsed. Many experts believe that this horrific recession was precipitated by the passage of bipartisan legislation enacted during Bill Clinton's administration that deregulated Wall Street and the activities of the largest financial interests in the country."

"I am somewhat uncertain whether there is a definite factual question as to whether natural language handles truth-value gaps … Nor am I even quite sure that there is a definite question of fact as to whether natural language should be evaluated by the minimal fixed point or another, given the choice of a scheme for handling gaps. We are not at the moment searching for the correct scheme."

"If I use the name 'Hesperus' to refer to a certain planetary body when seen in a certain celestial position in the evening, it will not therefore be a necessary truth that Hesperus is ever seen in the evening. That depends on various contingent facts about people being there to see and things like that. So even if I should say to myself that I will use 'Hesperus' to name the heavenly body I see in the evening in yonder position of the sky, it will not be necessary that Hesperus was ever seen in the evening. But it may be a priori in that this is how I have determined the referent."

"It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong."

"In order to overcome the Reagan ascendency Democrats needed to advance the rights secured during the 1960s while returning to more traditional political bedrock. To a remarkable extent, Clinton delivered on that promise...Governor Clinton said in 1991: “Government’s responsibility is to create more opportunity for everybody, and our responsibility is to make the most of it.” These are Democratic ideas, and liberal ones. Bill Clinton reaffirmed, updated, and carried them forward into the twenty-first century."

"The President was shooting bombs overseas. Yet, I'm a bad guy because I sing some rock-and-roll songs? Who's a bigger influence, the President or Marilyn Manson? I'd like to think me, but I'm going to go with the President."

"He was admitted to the hospital for close monitoring and administered IV antibiotics and fluids. He remains at the hospital for continuous monitoring. We hope to have him go home soon."

"I think Bill Clinton was a great President. You know, you look at the country then - the economy was doing great. Look at what happened during the Clinton years. I mean, we had no war, the economy was doing great, everybody was happy. A lot of people hated him because they were jealous as hell."

"Power corrupts, and, in many cases, absolute power makes you really horny. Clinton, Chirac, Mao, Mitterrand."

"One undeniable accomplishment of Bill Clinton's presidency was that it kept Jimmy Carter from being the worst U.S. president in history."

"On a more serious note, one of the major differences between the two presidents dealt with partisan politics. President Clinton had reached out to the Republican Party in an attempt to have bipartisan legislation and bipartisan views of the different issues that would be required. He further extended that hand by selecting Senator William Cohen, a Republican, to be his Secretary of Defense. Contrast that with the incoming administration of President Bush, which was filled with a number of neocons and had an intense distaste- and distrust- for anybody who was associated with either a prior administration or the Democratic Party in general, in spit of their high levels of expertise and experience. I'm talking about midlevel and low-level positions that required a nomination or an appointment to be made by the President. If they had touched the Democratic Party in any way or if they had worked in a prior Democratic administration, they could forget it because they just weren't going to be considered in any capacity. It's too bad because he lost a large number of top people who would have been loyal, dedicated workers- but it was not to be. From my standpoint, it was disruptive to good government. Long gone were the days of a bipartisan view of what was best for America, which made it a very distasteful environment."

"The uncomfortable truth is that, whether you're Donald Trump or Bill Clinton, economic populism is most effective in American politics when it is paired with appeals to racism."

"This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is BS. Not only do you kick him, you kick him until he passes out — then beat him over the head with a baseball bat, then roll him up in an old rug, and throw him off the cliff into the pound[ing] surf below!"

"President Clinton, like Bush and Reagan before him, is supporting a trade policy that protects the interests and profits of multinational corporations, while compromising the interests of American workers."

"After Clinton's failure to reform our health care system, we ended up with a cumbersome, profit-driven, consumer-unfriendly, inefficient health care delivery system dominated by insurance companies. And I mean dominated."

"In 1993, during the debate over NAFTA, President Clinton promised us that the trade agreement with Mexico and Canada would "create a million jobs in the first five years"...Unfortunately, President Clinton, Senator McConnell, the Heritage Foundation, and many, many others were way off the mark. Instead of creating a million American jobs, the Economic Policy Institute found, NAFTA destroyed more than 850,000 American jobs."

"The great media lie in the 1992 electoral campaign is that Clinton, unlike earlier Democratic presidential candidates, has moved from the “left” to the “middle” of the political spectrum, and also that unlike earlier presidential candidates he is not beholden to left-wing special interests. The fact is that they tried the same nonsense in the Dukakis campaign in 1988, and they were not successful in fooling too many people. Clinton’s “moderation” and “business friendly” views consist of his promotion of “investments.” But these “investments” have mysteriously been redefined to consist of government spending! The current media narrative claims that the US economy is losing productivity, and that what is needed to improve productivity is higher taxes (!) and increased government spending on “infrastructure”—that is to say, more money wasted on government roads and more money for schools which serve mostly as indoctrination camps."

"The idea of Bill Clinton back in the White House with nothing to do is something I just can't imagine."

"George Herbert Walker Bush invented regime change in Iraq and Bill Clinton inherited it, and ran with it. The CIA made four concerted efforts to assassinate Saddam Hussein under Clinton's leadership.... And I really am tired of all the Clinton Democrats running around getting all-sanctimonious over Iraq. It was them who killed 1.5 to 2.2 million Iraqis through sanctions. Sanctions that Madeline Albright, their illustrious Secretary of State, when confronted with the fact of 500,000 dead Iraqi children, said it was a price she was willing to pay."

"The political price for passing the ban included the loss of Congress to the Republicans in 1994, endangering Clinton's agenda, and creating the partisan conditions on Capitol Hill that produced his own impeachment. Even Clinton himself, looking back on the assault weapon ban in his memoir, My Life, concluded that he had likely “pushed the Congress, the country, and the administration too hard.”"

"I find him cowardly and spineless"

"I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration."

"This fellow they've nominated claims he's the new Thomas Jefferson. Well, let me tell you something. I knew Thomas Jefferson. He was a friend of mine. And governor, you're no Thomas Jefferson."

"I was really looking forward to it because I got a shiver of fear up my spine about it. He was my favourite president of the 20th century. I didn’t agree with him politically on a few things, but he was emblematic of my mother and father’s generation and a great communicator."