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

— Booker T. Washington Misattributed

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"Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad Company." This was a French maxim, late 16th century, as quoted by George Washington in his "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation," Rule # 56 (ca. 1744)

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Good and Evil

More quotes by Booker T. Washington

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

Up From Slavery (1901)

Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.

Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.

My whole life has largely been one of surprises.

Up From Slavery (1901)

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

All Booker T. Washington quotes →

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I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

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Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

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There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Booker T. Washington (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.