Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

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16 Great Passage From: Up From Slavery, By: Booker T. Washington

16 Great Passage From: Up From Slavery, By: Booker T. Washington
These quotes are from Up From Slavery (Amazon) By: Booker T. Washington.

1.
If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.

2.
The lesson that my mother taught me in this has always remained with me, and I have tried as best I could to teach it to others. I have always felt proud, whenever I think of the incident, that my mother had strength of character enough not to be fed into the temptation of seeming to be that which she was not—of trying to impress my schoolmates and others with the fact that she was able to buy me a “store hat” when she was not. I have always felt proud that she refused to go into debt for that which she did not have the money to pay for. Since that time I have owned many kinds of caps and hats, but never one of which I have felt so proud as of the cap made of the two pieces of cloth sewed together by my mother. I have noted the fact, but without satisfaction, I need not add, that several of the boys who began their careers with “store hats” and who were my schoolmates and used to join in the sport that was made of me because I had only a “homespun” cap, have ended their careers in the penitentiary, while others are not able now to buy any kind of hat.

3.
…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.

4.
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. I have always had a high regard for the man who could tell me how to succeed.

5.
At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour’s own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.

6.
The more we talked with the students, who were then coming to us from several parts of the state, the more we found that the chief ambition among a large proportion of them was to get an education so that they would not have to work any longer with their hands. This is illustrated by a story told of a coloured man in Alabama, who, one hot day in July, while he was at work in a cotton-field, suddenly stopped, and, looking toward the skies, said: “O Lawd, de cotton am so grassy, de work am so hard, and the sun am so hot dat I b’lieve dis darky am called to preach!”

7.
As I look back now over that part of our struggle, I am glad that we had it. I am glad that we endured all those discomforts and inconveniences. I am glad that our students had to dig out the place for their kitchen and dining room. I am glad that our first boarding-place was in that dismal, ill-lighted, and damp basement. Had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient room, I fear we would have “lost our heads” and become “stuck up.” It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for one’s self.   When our old students return to Tuskegee now, as they often do, and go into our large, beautiful, well-ventilated, and well-lighted dining room, and see tempting, well-cooked food—largely grown by the students themselves—and see tables, neat tablecloths and napkins, and vases of flowers upon the tables, and hear singing birds, and note that each meal is served exactly upon the minute, with no disorder, and with almost no complaint coming from the hundreds that now fill our dining room, they, too, often say to me that they are glad that we started as we did, and built ourselves up year by year, by a slow and natural process of growth.

8.
I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

9.
The white man who begins by cheating a Negro usually ends by cheating a white man.

10.
In order to be successful in any kind of undertaking, I think the main thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause. In proportion as one loses himself in this way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness out of his work.

11.
My experience in getting money for Tuskegee has taught me to have no patience with those people who are always condemning the rich because they are rich, and because they do not give more to objects of charity. In the first place, those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much suffering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises.

12.
If no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life, the Christlike work which the Church of all denominations in America has done during the last thirty-five years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian.

13.
Right here, perhaps, I ought to add that I make it a rule never to go before an audience, on any occasion, without asking the blessing of God upon what I want to say.

14.
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

15.
I have found that the happiest people are those who do the most for others; the most miserable are those who do the least.

16.
BEFORE going to Europe some events came into my life which were great surprises to me. In fact, 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. I pity the man, black or white, who has never experienced the joy and satisfaction that come to one by reason of an effort to assist in making some one else more useful and more happy. 

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Filed Under: PotpourriTagged With: #Quotes, #Reading

Economics And Reading

Economics And Reading

In 2008, Steve Jobs predicted in the New York Times:

It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore, he said. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.  The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.

In fact, Jobs claim about why the Kindle book reader, among other similar products, would be a failure, seems to be supported by recent evidence that may have been at his disposal.  As recently as 2007, a study done by the National Endowment of the Arts, found:

On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading. Reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups.  From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in prose reading dropped by 10 points, a 20 percent rate of decline. In 2002, only 52 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24, the college years, read a book voluntarily, down from 59 percent in 1992.

The number of adults with bachelor’s degrees and “proficient in reading prose” dropped from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003.

However, a more recent study done in 2009, also by the NEA, shows these trends turning around for the first time in 25 years.  The new study reported:

The proportion of adults reading some kind of so-called literary work “just over half” is still not as high as it was in 1982 or 1992, and the proportion of adults reading poetry and drama continued to decline. Nevertheless the proportion of overall literary reading increased among virtually all age groups, ethnic and demographic categories since 2002. It increased most dramatically among 18-to-24-year-olds, who had previously shown the most significant declines.

According to some this increase in reading is a direct result of the popularity of ebooks. Imagine that: because of technology and innovation, the reading of books has been made more portable and more affordable. And now, more people are reading.

Since then, Amazon has reported that Kindle Books now outsell both traditional hardbacks and paperbacks.

It seems Mr. Jobs prediction in 2008 was off.

Some might even say that Apple rolled out the popular iPad in the wake of the Amazon Kindle’s success.

However, there can be no doubt about Apple’s iBooks store a direct answer to the Kindle, indeed.

So, if reading is on the rise, readers need to be encouraged not only to read they also need to be encouraged what to read. Simply put:  New readers need to be encouraged to read that which is great.  And who better to decide what is great than the market itself?  As the market for books can be seen as the generations of readers that have come before us, new readers would do well to focus on the works that both survived and thrived.  In the world of fiction, (outside of the English majors)  Harry Potter and the Twilight Series are about all people seem to talk about these days, good, or bad, as they both might be.  It’s as if the pop culture flavor of the day appears to suit most people just fine.  I hope that is not entirely accurate, but if so – so much is being missed.

The reading of great novels that have withstood the test of time should not be willfully discarded for the latest flash in the pan.  The names of Jane Austen, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote, Anton Chekov, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Larry McMurtry, Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Mark Twain, and Virginia Wolf should not be an enigma to the masses.

Ignoring some of these works of fiction would be kin to an economist being a great follower of Paul Krugman, Greg Mankiw, Robert Murphy, and Nouriel Roubini while having never considered anything that was written by John Maynard Keynes, Ludwig von Mises, David Ricardo, or Adam Smith.

New readers should know, and be excited to know, what William Faulkner, Booth Tarkington, and John Updike have in common.  And for those of you that might still be wondering, William Faulkner, Booth Tarkington, and John Updike are the only people to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction more than once (called novel from 1917-1947).

Exploring readers should marvel the fact that Ernest Hemingway’s classic, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, was actually first published in the pages of Esquire, and that Truman Capote and Harper Lee were wonderful friends – C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien were friends too.

Don’t get it wrong.  Some of the classics can be tedious.  Some of the classics can be dry, even boring.  And everyone likes the occasional  easy-to-read-turn-your-brain-off-junk-food-of -a-book.  However, there are plenty of noteworthy novels that are more than readable.  For starters, try The Last Picture Show, Rabbit, Run, and All the Pretty Horses – and try – try – not to fall in love with Duane, Sonny, Rabbit, or John Grady Cole.  The small town life of boredom and growing up, the tragedy of rebellion from normalcy, and the quiet moral compass of a boy looking for love on the open range are not narrated landscapes to be missed.

It is not that readers should avoid books that are new.  It is that a new and unproven book should not be exalted in complete disregard and ignorance of a book that is great.

So, go for it.  And if you are a new reader, be encouraged.  Pick up a good book and be taken by it.  For heaven’s sake though, pick a good one.

Start with one the market has tested.

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Filed Under: PotpourriTagged With: #Economics, #Reading

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