George Washington Carver Quotations

Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.

Where there is no vision, there is no hope.

When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.

Since new developments are the products of a creative mind, we must therefore stimulate and encourage that type of mind in every way possible.

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.

When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.

Our creator is the same and never changes despite the names given Him by people here and in all parts of the world. Even if we gave Him no name at all, He would still be there, within us, waiting to give us good on this earth.

I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life - but there was no one to tell me.

Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable.

When our thoughts - which bring actions - are filled with hate against anyone, Negro or white, we are in a living hell. That is as real as hell will ever be.

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.

There is no short cut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation - veneer isn't worth anything.

No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it.

Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater.

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

If you love it enough, anything will talk with you.

If you love something enough, it will reveal itself to you.

When I touch that flower, I am not merely touching that flower. I am touching infinity. That little flower existed long before there were human beings on this earth. It will continue to exist for thousands, yes, millions of years to come.

I think I'll sleep now.

Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Let them talk to you. You learn to talk to them.

Unkindness to anything means an injustice to that thing. If I am unkind to you I do you an injustice, or wrong you in some way. On the other hand, if I try to assist you in every way that I can to make a better citizen and in every way to do my very best for you, I am kind to you. The above principles apply with equal force to the soil. The farmer whose soil produces less every year, is unkind to it in some way; that is, he is not doing by it what he should; he is robbing it of some substance it must have, and he becomes, therefore, a soil robber rather than a progressive farmer.

In these strenuous times, we are likely to become morbid and look constantly on the dark side of life, and spend entirely too much time considering and brooding over what we can't do, rather than what we can do, and instead of growing morose and despondent over opportunities either real or imaginary that are shut from us, let us rejoice at the many unexplored fields in which there is unlimited fame and fortune to the successful explorer and upon which there is no color line; simply the survival of the fittest.

The centre of his world was the south where he was born in slavery some 79 years ago and where he did his work as a creative scientist.

A life that stood out as a gospel of self-forgetting service. He could have added fortune to fame but caring for neither he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world. The centre of his world was the south where he was born in slavery some 79 years ago and where he did his work as a creative scientist.

Do what you can, with what you have and do it now!

All flowers talk to me and so do hundreds of little living things in the woods. I learn what I know by watching and loving everything.

More and more as we come closer and closer in touch with nature and its teachings are we able to see the Divine and are therefore fitted to interpret correctly the various languages spoken by all forms of nature about us.

Fear of something is at the root of hate for others and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. Keep your thoughts free from hate, and you will have no fear from those who hate you. ... David, though small, was filled with truth, right thinking and good will for others. Goliath represents one who let fear into his heart, and it stayed there long enough to grow into hate for others.

He who puts a product upon the market as it demands, controls that market, regardless of color. It is simply a survival of the fittest.

If you listen carefully enough to anything, it will talk to you.

There is a use for almost everything.

Education is understanding relationships.

My work is that of keeping every operation down (in size) so that the farmer and the man farthest down can get hold of it.

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.

The rapid growth of industry, the ever increasing population and the imperative need for more varied, wholesome and nourishing foodstuff makes it all the more necessary to exhaust every means at our command to fill the empty dinner pail, enrich our soils, bring greater wealth and influence to our beautiful South land, which is synonymous to a healthy, happy and contented people.

There is no shortcut to achievement.

The beating on the tail of the snake may stop his progress a little, but the more vital parts must be struck before his poisonous death-dealing venom will be wiped out.

We have become ninety-nine percent money mad. The method of living at home modestly and within our income, laying a little by systematically for the proverbial rainy day which is due to come, can almost be listed among the lost arts.

You can't tear up everything just to get the dollar out of it without suffering as result. It is a travesty to burn our woods and thereby burn up the fertilizer nature has provided for us. We must enrich our soil every year instead of merely depleting it. It is fundamental that nature will drive away those who commit sin against it.

I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets . . .

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise. At no other time have I so sharp an understanding of what God means to do with me as in these hours of dawn.

Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill.

Never a day passes but that I do myself the honor to commune with some of nature's varied forms.

Let us rejoice at the many unexplored fields in which there is unlimited fame and fortune to the successful explorer . . .

Education, in the broadest of truest sense, will make an individual seek to help all people, regardless of race, regardless of color, regardless of condition.

Whatever you love opens its secrets to you.

God gave them [the discoveries] to me; how can I sell them to someone else?

We get closer to God as we get more intimately and understandingly acquainted with the things He has created. I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for one's self.

There is no short cut to acheivement.

I went to the trash pile at Tuskegee Institute and started my laboratory with bottles, old fruit jars and any other thing I found I could use. ... [The early efforts were] worked out almost wholly on top of my flat topped writing desk and with teacups, glasses, bottles and reagents I made myself.

There is literally nothing that I ever asked to do, that I asked the blessed Creator to help me to do, that I have not been able to accomplish.

I believe that the great Creator has put ores and oil on this Earth to give us a breathing spell ... as we exhaust them, we must be prepared to fall back on our farms, which are God's true storehouse. We can learn to synthesize materials for every human need from things that grow.

It is simply service that measures success.

All my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day.

You can't teach people anything. You can only draw out.

I know that my Redeemer lives. Thank God I love humanity, complexion doesn't interest me one single a bit.

Young people, I want to beg of you always keep your eyes open to what Mother Nature has to teach you. By so doing you will learn many valuable things every day of your life.

One reason I never patent my products is that if I did it would take so much time, I would get nothing else done. But mainly I don't want my discoveries to benefit specific favored persons.

Without my Savior, I am nothing.

There are two ways, one is right; the other is wrong. If your work is only about right, then it is wrong.

It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success.

Learn to do the common things uncommonly well.

Believe. The promise of God are real. They are as real, as solid, yes infinitely more solid than this table which the materialist so thoroughly believes in. If you would only believe, O ye of little faith.

My purpose alone must be God's purpose.

One of the things that has helped me as much as any other is not how long I am going to live, but how much I can do while living.

To those who have not yet learned the secret of true happiness, begin now to study the little things in your own door yard.

The secret of my success? It is simple. It is found in the Bible.

I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for ones self.

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also – if you love them enough.

As I worked on projects which fulfilled a real human need forces were working through me which amazed me. I would often go to sleep with an apparently insoluble problem. When I woke the answer was there. Why, then, should we who believe in Christ be so surprised at what God can do with a willing man in a laboratory? Some things must be baffling to the critic who has never been born again.

Most people search high and wide for the key to success. If they only knew, the key to their dreams lies within.

When I was young, I said to God, 'God, tell me the mystery of the universe.' But God answered, 'That knowledge is for me alone.' So I said, 'God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.' Then God said, 'Well George, that's more nearly your size.' And he told me.

Start where you are, with what you have. Make something of it and never be satisfied.

God is going to reveal to us things He never revealed before if we put our hands in His. No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way of doing it are revealed to me. I never have to grope for methods. The method is revealed to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain I would be helpless.

My prayers seem to be more of an attitude than anything else. I indulge in very little lip service, but ask the Great Creator silently, daily, and often many times a day, to permit me to speak to Him through the three great Kingdoms of the world which He has created - the animal, mineral, and vegetable Kingdoms - to understand their relations to each other, and our relations to them and to the Great God who made all of us. I ask Him daily and often momently to give me wisdom, understanding, and bodily strength to do His will; hence I am asking and receiving all the time.

How far you go in life depends on...