“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.”
Source: Up From Slavery: An Autobiography
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Booker T. Washington 48
African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor 1856–1915Related quotes
“I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”
Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 19–22
The Spirit of Revolt (1880)
Context: Whoever has a slight knowledge of history and a fairly clear head knows perfectly well from the beginning that theoretical propaganda for revolution will necessarily express itself in action long before the theoreticians have decided that the moment to act has come. Nevertheless, the cautious theoreticians are angry at these madmen, they excommunicate them, they anathematize them. But the madmen win sympathy, the mass of the people secretly applaud their courage, and they find imitators. In proportion as the pioneers go to fill the jails and the penal colonies, others continue their work; acts of illegal protest, of revolt, of vengeance, multiply.
Indifference from this point on is impossible. Those who at the beginning never so much as asked what the "madmen" wanted, are compelled to think about them, to discuss their ideas, to take sides for or against. By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people's minds and wins converts. One such act may, in a few days, make more propaganda than thousands of pamphlets.
Above all, it awakens the spirit of revolt: it breeds daring. The old order, supported by the police, the magistrates, the gendarmes and the soldiers, appeared unshakable, like the old fortress of the Bastille, which also appeared impregnable to the eyes of the unarmed people gathered beneath its high walls equipped with loaded cannon. But soon it became apparent that the established order has not the force one had supposed.
“Thus every matter, if it is to be done well, calls for the attention of the whole person.”
Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).
Source: Planet of the Damned (1962), Chapter 8
“Want more credit for all you do and who you are? Be the one who gives credit to others.”
As quoted in "The Works of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford" in The Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal, Vol. 27 (1798) edited by Ralph Griffiths, p. 187
"The Treaty With China", article in The New York Tribune, 1868-08-04. Quoted in Mark Twain's Letters, volume ii, p. 239 https://books.google.com/books?id=EWvU21-vV8EC&pg=PA239&lpg=PA239&dq=%22I+have+seen+Chinamen+abused+and+maltreated+in+all+the+mean,+cowardly+ways+possible+to+the+invention+of+a+degraded+nature.%22&source=bl&ots=-MSeb52ibq&sig=7EJ2Hkgp58wiQNoBmWysiM5YcIQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMxPKKvbTMAhUM4mMKHbICCt0Q6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22I%20have%20seen%20Chinamen%20abused%20and%20maltreated%20in%20all%20the%20mean%2C%20cowardly%20ways%20possible%20to%20the%20invention%20of%20a%20degraded%20nature.%22&f=false