George Washington Carver was a well-known American agricultural scientist and inventor.
He popularised alternative crops to cotton and diverse ways to mitigate soil depletion. He was the most famous scientist during the early '20s.
Carver passed away on January 5, 1943, after falling down the stairs. However, the ideas he contributed to agriculture would live on.
He became the first Black scientist to have a memorial by a national monument built close to his birthplace in Diamond Grove, Missouri. Carver researched alternative crops with peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans.
He made new developments to help improve the lives of poor farmers like himself. He wanted them to be able to provide their food. Using a mobile classroom, the Jesup Wagon, Carver was able to teach those who were enslaved farmworkers.
He also used showmanship to educate and entertain people about agriculture. Carver was a recipient of numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP.
Famous George Washington Carver Quotes
"Take care of the waste on the farm and turn it into useful channels should be the slogan of every farmer."
"We have become ninety-nine percent money mad. The method of living at home modestly and within our income, laying a little by systematically for the proverbial rainy day which is due to come, can almost be listed among the lost arts."
"The beating on the tail of the snake may stop his progress a little, but the more vital parts must be struck before his poisonous death-dealing venom will be wiped out."
"Never a day passes but that I do myself the honor to commune with some of nature's varied forms."
"Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise."
"There is a use for almost everything."
"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."
"If you listen carefully enough to anything, it will talk to you."
"You can't teach people anything. You can only draw out."
"The rapid growth of industry, the ever-increasing population, and the imperative need for more varied, wholesome, and nourishing foodstuff make it all the more necessary to exhaust every means at our command to fill the empty dinner pail, enrich our soils, bring greater wealth and influence to our beautiful South Land, which is synonymous to a healthy, happy and contented people."
"To those who have not yet learned the secret of true happiness, begin now to study the little things in your own dooryard."
"Where there is no vision, there is no hope."
"The center of his world was the south where he was born in slavery some 79 years ago and where he did his work as a creative scientist."
"He who puts a product upon the market as it demands, controls that market, regardless of color. It is simply a survival of the fittest."
"When I touch that flower, I am not merely touching that flower. I am touching infinity. That little flower existed long before there were human beings on this earth. It will continue to exist for thousands, yes, millions of years to come."
"One reason I never patent my products is that if I did it would take so much time, I would get nothing else done. But mainly I don't want my discoveries to benefit specific favored persons."
"There are two ways, one is right; the other is wrong. If your work is only about right, then it is wrong."
“I think I'll sleep now.”
George Washington Carver Quotes On Education
"Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books..."
"Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable."
"Education is understanding relationships."
"Young people, I want to beg of you always keep your eyes open to what Mother Nature has to teach you. By so doing you will learn many valuable things every day of your life."
"I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life – but there was no one to tell me."
"I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for one's self."
"Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise, God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill."
"All flowers talk to me and so do hundreds of little living things in the woods. I learn what I know by watching and loving everything."
"Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Let them talk to you. You learn to talk to them."
"Education, in the broadest of truest sense, will make an individual seek to help all people, regardless of race, regardless of color, regardless of condition."
"Since new developments are the products of a creative mind, we must therefore stimulate and encourage that type of mind in every way possible."
"Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom."
"From a child, I had an inordinate desire for knowledge and especially music, painting, flowers, and the sciences, Algebra being one of my favorite studies."
Motivational George Washington Carver Quotes
"I would never allow anyone to give me money, no difference how badly I needed it. I wanted literally to earn my living."
"No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it."
"Do what you can, with what you have, and do it now!"
"Most people search high and wide for the key to success. If they only knew, the key to their dreams lies within."
"Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater."
"It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success."
"It is better to be alone than in bad company."
"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."
"When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."
"There is no shortcut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation – veneer isn't worth anything."
"Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also – if you love them enough."
"One of the things that has helped me as much as any other is not how long I am going to live, but how much I can do while living."
"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."
"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses."
"Start where you are, with what you have. Make something of it and never be satisfied."
George Washington Carver Quotes About God And Faith
"I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour if we will only tune in."
"We get closer to God as we get more intimately and understandingly acquainted with the things He has created. I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for one's self."
"Without my Savior, I am nothing."
"God is going to reveal to us things He never revealed before if we put our hands in His. No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way of doing it are revealed to me.
I never have to grope for methods. The method is revealed to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain I would be helpless."
"My purpose alone must be God's purpose."
"There is literally nothing that I ever asked to do, that I asked the blessed Creator to help me to do, that I have not been able to accomplish."
When I was young, I said to God, 'God, tell me the mystery of the universe.' But God answered, 'That knowledge is for me alone.' So I said, 'God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.' Then God said, 'Well George, that's more nearly your size.' And he told me.
"Believe. The promises of God are real. They are as real, as solid, yes infinitely more solid than this table which the materialist so thoroughly believes in. If you would only believe, O ye of little faith."
"I know that my Redeemer lives. Thank God I love humanity, complexion doesn't interest me one single bit."
"The secret of my success? It is simple. It is found in the Bible."
"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." ~ George Washington Carver
"Our creator is the same and never changes despite the names given Him by people here and in all parts of the world. Eve "All my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day."
"If we gave Him no name at all, He would still be there, within us, waiting to give us good on this earth."
"I ask Him daily and often momently to give me wisdom, understanding, and bodily strength to do His will; hence I am asking and receiving all the time."
