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George Washington Carver

African American botanist and inventor (1864-1943)

George Washington Carver (12 July 1864 – 5 January 1943) was an African-American botanist who worked in agricultural extension in the southern United States.

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.

Quotes

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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.
  • The virgin fertility of our soils and the vast amount of unskilled labor have been more of a curse than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system for cultivation, the destruction of forest, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, have made our agricultural problem one requiring more brains than of the North, East or West.
    • The Need of Scientific Agriculture in the South (Tuskegee Institute, 1902)
  • 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.
    • How to Search for Truth, letter to Hubert W. Pelt (1930-02-24)
  • I love to think of nature as unlimited broadcasting stations, through which God speaks to us every day, every hour and every moment of our lives, if we will only tune in and remain so.
    • How to Search for Truth, letter to Hubert W. Pelt (1930-02-24)
  • 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.
    • Quoted in Linda O. McMurray, George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol (Oxford University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-195-03205-5, 382 pages), p. 106
  • I do not feel capable of writing a single word of counsel to those dear young people, more than to say that my heart goes out to every one of them, regardless of the fact that I have never seen them and may never do so. I want them to find Jesus, and make Him a daily, hourly, and momently part of themselves. O how I want them to get the fullest measure of happiness and success out of life. I want them to see the Great Creator in the smallest and apparently the most insignificant things about them. How I long for each one to walk and talk with the Great Creator through the things he has created. How I thank God every day that I can walk and talk with Him.
  • My beloved friend, keep your hand in that of the Master, walk daily by His side, so that you may lead others into the realms of true happiness, where a religion of hate, (which poisons both body and soul) will be unknown, having in its place the "Golden Rule" way, which is the "Jesus Way" of life, will reign supreme. Then, we can walk and talk with Jesus momentarily, because we will be attuned to His will and wishes, thus making the Creation story of the world non-debatable as to its reality. God, my beloved friend is infinite the highest embodiment of love. We are finite, surrounded and often filled with hate. We can only understand the infinite as we loose the finite and take on the infinite.
  • I know that my Redeemer lives. Thank God I love humanity, complexion doesn't interest me one single a bit.
 
Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater.
  • 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.
    • Quoted in Linda O. McMurray, George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol (Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 107
  • 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 need have no fear from those who hate you.
    • Quoted in Linda O. McMurray, George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol (Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 107
  • My attitude toward life was also my attitude toward science. Jesus said one must be born again, must become as a little child. He must let no laziness, no fear, no stubbornness keep him from his duty. If he were born again he would see life from such a plane he would have the energy not to be impeded in his duty by these various sidetrackers and inhibitions. My work, my life, must be in the spirit of a little child seeking only to know the truth and follow it. My purpose alone must be God's purpose - to increase the welfare and happiness of His people. Nature will not permit a vacuum. It will be filled with something. Human need is really a great spiritual vacuum which God seeks to fill... With one hand in the hand of a fellow man in need and the other in the hand of Christ, He could get across the vacuum and I became an agent. Then the passage, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me," came to have real meaning. 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.

Quotes about George Washington Carver

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  • It is necessary for our generation to repudiate Carver and all the lesser-known black leaders who cooperated with the white design to keep their people down. We need none of their kind today. Someday, when, God willing, the struggle is over and its bitterness has faded, those men and women may be rediscovered and given their just due for working, as best they could see to do in their time and place, for their brothers and sisters. But at present their influence is pernicious, and where they still control education, in the North or the South, they must be replaced with educators who are ready to demand full equality for the oppressed races and fight for it at any cost.
  • Professor Carver, who teaches scientific agriculture, botany, agricultural chemistry, etc., at Tuskegee, is, as regards complexion and features, an absolute Negro; but in the cut of his clothes, the accent of his speech, the soundness of his science, he might be professor of botany, not at Tuskegee, but at Oxford or Cambridge. Any European botanist of distinction, after ten minutes' conversation with this man, instinctively would treat him as a man on a level with himself.
  • He is better known as the greatest Negro scientist alive, the man who pioneered new uses for Southern agricultural products, developed 285 new uses for the peanut, got 118 products, including vinegar, molasses and shoe blacking, from the South’s surplus sweet potatoes.
    • Time Magazine's article "Black Leonardo", November 24, 1941.
  • The versatility of his genius and his achievements in diverse branches of the arts and sciences were truly amazing. The versatility of his genius All mankind is the beneficiary of his discoveries in the field of agricultural chemistry. The things which he achieved in the face of early handicaps will for all time afford an inspiration of youth everywhere. The things, which he achieved in the face of early handicaps, will for all time afford an inspiration of youth everywhere. I count it a great privilege to have met Dr. Carver and to have talked with him at Tuskegee on the occasion of my visit to the institute, which was the scene of his long and distinguished labors.
  • From oppressive and crippling surroundings, George Washington Carver lifted his searching, creative mind to the ordinary peanut, and found therein extraordinary possibilities for goods and products unthinkable by minds of the past.
    • Martin Luther King Jr., 23 September 1959, during his Address at Public Meeting of the Southern Christian Ministers Conference of Mississippi.
  • From crippling circumstance, George Washington Carver made for himself an imperishable niche in the annals of science.
  • Although a few refer to George Washington Carver, whose research in agricultural products helped to revive the economy of the South when the throne of King Cotton began to totter, they ignore the contribution of Norbert Rillieux, whose invention of an evaporating pan revolutionized the process of sugar refining. How many people know that the multimillion-dollar United Shoe Machinery Company developed from the shoe-lasting machine invented in the last century by a Negro from Dutch Guiana, Jan Matzeliger, or that Granville T. Woods, an expert in electric motors, whose many patents speeded the growth and improvement of the railroads at the beginning of this century, was a Negro?
  • When Dr. Carver died, the United States lost one of her finest Christian gentleman. He was a good friend of my father and mother and I had known him for forty-seven years. To the world, he was known as a scientist. Those who knew him best, however, realized that this outstanding characteristic was a strong feeling of the eminence of God. Everything he was and did found its origin in that strong ans continuous feeling.
  • From Carver's small laboratory at Tuskegee came formulas in agricultural chemistry that enriched the entire Southland, indeed the whole of America and the world.
  • The scientific discoveries and experiments of Dr. Carver have done more to alleviate the one-crop agricultural system in the South than any other thing that has been done in the history of the United States.
    • Senator Harry S. Truman, on February 5, 1943, as quoted in George Washington Carver: Scientist and Educator, by Dennis Abrams, Gene Adair, p. 4.
  • [He] achieved a place as one of the foremost scientists of all the world for all time.
    • Senator Bennett Champ Clark of Missouri, as quoted in A History of Missouri, Volume 5, p. 272.
  • Dr. Carver left a legacy of hope and beacon light pointing to opportunities of the future... This Negro scientist who was born of slave parents succeeded by hard work and exalted vision to the stature of one of the most outstanding agricultural research scientists in the world."
    • Kansas Governor Payne Ratner, as quoted in George Washington Carver: A Biography, by Gary R. Kremer, p. 179
  • Dr. George Washington Carver was one of the wonders of this age... Those who believe and teach that a man's heritage determines his spiritual, mental and physical traits will be hard put to explain the source of Dr. Carver's amazing intellect.
    • New Orleans States, as quoted in World's Great Men of Color, Volume 2, p. 469-570.
  • If we were asked what living man had the worst start and the best finish, we would say, Dr. Carver. It's a great loss to us that we have no one like him in England.
    • Efficiency Magazine, as quoted in World's Great Men of Color, Volume 2, p. 469.
  • His work was his life, and by not diluting it with wrathful forays against the ignorance of prejudice he was able to make his own unique and most vital contribution to racial amity.
    • Lawrence Elliott (1966), George Washington Carver: The Man who Overcame, p. 207
  • Professor Carver, like the other men I have mentioned, is of unmixed African blood, and is one of the most thoroughly scientific men of the Negro race with whom I am acquainted. Whenever anyone who takes a scientific interest in cotton. Whenever any one who takes a scientific interest in cotton growing, or in the natural history of this part of the world, comes to visit Tuskegee, he invariably seeks out and consults Professor Carver.
    • Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education: Being Chapters from My Experience (1911), Doubleday, Page, p. 224
  • Although Professor Carver impresses every one who meets him with the extent of his knowledge in the matter of plant life, he is quite the most modest man I have ever met.
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