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Who really said it

I have learned that 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

Written by Booker T. Washington 1856–1915 · educator, author & founder of Tuskegee Institute
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Genuinely his. The line appears verbatim — opening “I have learned that…” — in Chapter II (“Boyhood Days”) of his 1901 autobiography Up From Slavery, and the same passage was printed a year earlier in his serialized memoir in The Outlook (10 November 1900).

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“I have learned that 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” Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901), ch. 2

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Provenance

The source

Work
Up From Slavery: An Autobiography
Author
Booker T. Washington
Location
Chapter II, “Boyhood Days”
First published
1901 (Doubleday, Page & Co.); passage first ran in The Outlook, 10 Nov 1900

I used to picture the way that I would act under such circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising until I reached the highest round of success. In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. I have learned that 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.

From Chapter II of Up From Slavery, reflecting on his childhood envy of white boys who seemed to face no obstacles.

Read Up From Slavery on Project Gutenberg

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ traces the earliest printing to Washington’s memoir installment in The Outlook, 10 November 1900.
  • The line appears verbatim in Chapter II of Up From Slavery (1901) ↗, opening “I have learned that…”
  • The same thought reappears in a 1915 account of Washington’s speech at a Harriet Tubman tribute, per Quote Investigator ↗.
Public domain

Up From Slavery was first published in 1901, and the passage ran earlier in The Outlook in 1900 — both well before 1931 — so the text is in the public domain in the United States.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

Booker T. Washington’s name is one of the internet’s biggest magnets for fabricated inspirational lines — but this one is the real thing. The main pitfall is misquotation, not misattribution.

Anonymous online quote sites Mis-worded

Many versions drop “while trying to succeed” or the opening “I have learned that,” and some swap “he has overcome” for “one has overcome.” The full, exact sentence is in Chapter II of Up From Slavery ↗.

The attribution is genuine: the line is verbatim Booker T. Washington, first printed in The Outlook in 1900 and collected in Up From Slavery in 1901, as documented by Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

Washington wrote this reflecting on his boyhood, when he envied white children who seemed to inherit success without struggle. Having been born into slavery and worked his way up through manual labor and self-education, he reframed success itself: what counts is not the height you reach but the distance you climbed to get there.

The line became one of the most quoted passages in Up From Slavery, a memoir that shaped American ideas about self-improvement and Black advancement at the turn of the twentieth century.

Success is to be measured… by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Success Resilience

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: full origin tracequoteinvestigator.com

Documents the 1900 Outlook printing and 1901 Up From Slavery source; confirms the attribution.
Up From Slavery (full text)gutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg edition; the line is in Chapter II, “Boyhood Days.”
Booker T. Washingtonen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the author, educator and Tuskegee founder.
Up From Slavery quotesgoodreads.com

Reader-collected quotations from the same autobiography.

The author

About Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

1856–1915 · American educator, author & founder of Tuskegee Institute

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery in Virginia and rose to become the most prominent Black educator and public figure in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1881 he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama. His 1901 autobiography Up From Slavery — the source of this line — became one of the most widely read American memoirs of its era.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1901), ch. 2, “Boyhood Days”; first printed in The Outlook, 10 Nov 1900.

MLA (9th ed.)

Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery: An Autobiography. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1901, ch. 2, “Boyhood Days.”

APA (7th ed.)

Washington, B. T. (1901). Up from slavery: An autobiography. Doubleday, Page & Co.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I have learned that 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’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-have-learned-that-success-is-to-be-measured-not-so-much

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