Dignity of Work

Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom, we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in the proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupatins of life, shall prosper in plroportions as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gawgaws of life and the useful. No [group] can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is as the bottom of life we must begin and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievences to overshadow our opportunities.

---Booker T. Washington, 1895