Who really said it

Success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached as by the obstacles overcome

Q: Did Booker T. Washington say "Success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached as by the obstacles overcome"?

Yes. Genuinely Washington's. He wrote it in an article in The Outlook (10 November 1900) and reused it in his 1901 autobiography Up from Slavery, Chapter II. The popular short form trims his original slightly — he wrote "the position that one has reached in life… the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed."

Written by Booker T. Washington 1856–1915 · Educator, orator & founder of Tuskegee Institute

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Genuinely Washington’s. He wrote it in an article in The Outlook (10 November 1900) and reused it in his 1901 autobiography Up from Slavery ↗, Chapter II. The popular short form trims his original slightly — he wrote “the position that one has reached in life… the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.”

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached as by the obstacles overcome” Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (1901), ch. II — first published in The Outlook, 10 November 1900.

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Provenance

The source

Author: Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)
Work: Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
First appearance: “The Outlook,” 10 November 1900; then Up from Slavery, 1901 (ch. II)
Location: Chapter II, “Boyhood Days”

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.

Washington’s original sentence, from Chapter II of Up from Slavery. The widely shared version condenses it to “the position one has reached… the obstacles overcome.”

Up from Slavery (full text, Project Gutenberg)

How we traced it

Quote Investigator ↗ dates the line to Washington’s article in The Outlook, 10 November 1900, and confirms he deserves the credit.
The identical sentence appears in Up from Slavery ↗ (1901), Chapter II — verified verbatim against the Project Gutenberg text.
The circulating short form (“position one has reached… obstacles overcome”) is a genuine but lightly trimmed paraphrase of that sentence.

Public domain

The line was first published in 1900 (The Outlook) and 1901 (Up from Slavery), both well before 1931, so the text is in the public domain in the United States.

Fact-check

A genuine quote, lightly reworded

The attribution is correct — the wording is what shifts. The version that circulates on quote sites is a condensed form of Washington’s original sentence.

Popular short form condensed

Sites drop “that one has reached in life” and the closing clause “which he has overcome while trying to succeed,” leaving “the position one has reached… the obstacles overcome.” The meaning is faithful; only the phrasing is trimmed, per Quote Investigator ↗.

Booker T. Washington genuinely wrote this in Up from Slavery ↗ (1901), first in The Outlook (1900) — the popular version just tightens his original words.

Context

Why it mattered

Washington wrote the line in The Outlook in 1900 and folded it into Up from Slavery, where it caps a reflection on his boyhood. Born into slavery, he framed achievement not as a rank attained but as a measure of the distance travelled against resistance.

The maxim became one of his most-quoted lines precisely because his own life embodied it — from salt furnace and coal mine to founder of Tuskegee and adviser to presidents.

Not the position reached, but the obstacles overcome.

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

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

Quote Origin: Success Is To Be Measured… By the Obstacles Overcomequoteinvestigator.com

Traces the line to Washington’s 1900 article in The Outlook and confirms the attribution.

Up from Slavery (full text)gutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg edition; the sentence appears verbatim in Chapter II.

Booker T. Washingtonen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the author, educator and founder of Tuskegee Institute.

Up from Slaveryen.wikipedia.org

Background on the 1901 autobiography containing the quote.

Booker T. Washington quotesen.wikiquote.org

Sourced collection of Washington’s quotations for cross-reference.

The true author

About Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

1856–1915 · Educator, orator & founder of Tuskegee Institute

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery in Virginia and rose to become the most influential Black American educator of his era, founding the Tuskegee Institute in 1881. His 1901 autobiography Up from Slavery became a landmark of American letters. This maxim distills the self-made ethic he preached and embodied.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Booker T. Washington, “Up from Slavery: An Autobiography” (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1901), ch. II, 39; first published in “The Outlook,” 10 November 1900, 654.

MLA (9th ed.)

Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery: An Autobiography. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1901, p. 39.

APA (7th ed.)

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

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached as by the obstacles overcome’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/success-is-to-be-measured-not-so-much-by-the-position-one