As a professor at Tuskegee University, he encouraged his students (all male at the time) to strive towards gaining eight cardinal virtues:
- Be clean both inside and out
- Look neither up to the rich or down on the poor
- Lose, if needs be, without squealing
- Win without bragging
- Always be considerate of women, children and older people
- Be too brave to lie
- Be too generous to cheat
- Take your share of the world and let others take theirs
Though certainly fine life goals, the list is a bit unwieldy as a quote. Luckily, he nicely summarized that basic philosophy thusly:
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.
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