Perseverance is my motto!

I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come.

I want you to understand that your first duty is to humanity. I want others to look at us and see that we care not

This is the greatest country under the sun. But we must not let our love of country, our patriotic loyalty, cause us to abate one

I have made it possible for many colored women to abandon the washtub for a more pleasant and profitable occupation.

America doesn’t respect anything but money. What our people need is a few millionaires.

I got my start by giving myself a start.

The girls and women of our race must not be afraid to take hold of business endeavor and, by patient industry, close economy, determined effort and close application to business, wring success out of a number of business opportunities that lie at their very doors.

I am not merely satisfied in making money for myself, for I am endeavoring to provide employment for hundreds of women of my race. … I want to say to every Negro woman present, don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them!

It’s pretty hard for the Lord to guide you if you haven’t made up your mind which way to go.

Never get impressed by someone’s appearance, rather dig deep down into their thoughts to reveal the real person inside out.

As I bent over the washboard and looked at my arms buried in soapsuds, I said to myself, ‘What are you going to do when you grow old and your back gets stiff?’ This set me to thinking, but with all my thinking I couldn’t see how a poor washerwoman was going to better my condition.

God answered my prayer, for one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind I would begin to sell it.

Surely you are not going to shut the door in my face.

Open your own shop. Secure prosperity and freedom.

Worth more than it costs.

When we began to make $10 a day, my ex-husband thought that was enough, thought I ought to be satisfied. But I was convinced that my hair preparation would fill a long-felt want. And when we found it impossible to agree, due to his narrowness of vision, I embarked on business for myself.

One can slide between poor and rich, the difference as slight as between paper and parchment, one voice and a choir, arms hanging by sides and a hug.

I refuse to be labeled immoral merely because I am godless.

Britain has invented a new missile. It’s called the civil servant, it doesn’t work and it can’t be fired.

I am not satisfied in making money for myself. I endeavor to provide employment for hundreds of the women of my race.

I am a woman that came from the cotton fields of the South. I was promoted from there to the washtub. Then I was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations…. Everybody told me I was making a mistake by going into this business, but I know how to grow hair as well as I know how to grow cotton.

Hair is power. You can’t imagine what it is like to lose it.

Now I realize that in the so-called higher walks of life, many were prone to look down upon ‘hairdressers’ as they called us; they didn’t have a very high opinion of our calling, so I had to go down and dignify this work, so much so that many of the best women of our race are now engaged in this line of business, and many of them are now in my employ.

People are ugly not in their face but in their thoughts.

Keep in mind that you have something that the person standing before you really needs, imagine yourself a missionary and convert him.

Love’s language is imprecise, fits more like mittens than gloves.

Having a good article for the market is one thing, putting it properly before the public is another.

You might say that I was the first and caused others to awaken to the sense of their duty in helping deserving causes for the benefit of the race.

There would be no hair growing business today had I not started it.

I have built my own factory on my own ground, 38 by 208 feet. I employ in that factory seven people, including a bookkeeper, a stenographer, a cook and a housegirl.

Don’t think that because you have to go down in the wash-tub that you are any less a lady!

I am not ashamed of my past; I am not ashamed of my humble beginnings.

My object in life is not simply to make money for myself or to spend it on myself in dressing or running around in an automobile, but I love to use a part of what I make in trying to help others.

There is no royal flower strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it, for whatever success I have attained has been the result of much hard work and many sleepless nights.

I had little or no opportunity when I started out in life.

I want the great masses of my people to take a greater pride in their appearance and to give their hair proper attention.

My advice to every one expecting to go into business is to hit often and hit hard; in other words, strike with all your might.

I feel that I am in a business that is a credit to the womanhood of our race.

I want to live to help my race.

I have always held myself out as a hair culturist. I grow hair.

I have not found it for I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard.