Madam C. J. Walker

My object in life is not simply to make money for myself or to spend it on myself in dressing or running around in an automobile, but I love to use a part of what I make in trying to help others.

I have made it possible for many colored women to abandon the washtub for a more pleasant and profitable occupation.

My advice to every one expecting to go into business is to hit often and hit hard; in other words, strike with all your might.

Don't think that because you have to go down in the wash-tub that you are any less a lady!

I want the great masses of my people to take a greater pride in their appearance and to give their hair proper attention.

I have always held myself out as a hair culturist. I grow hair.

I feel that I am in a business that is a credit to the womanhood of our race.

I want to live to help my race.

In a dream, a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. I made up my mind I would begin to sell it.

As I bent over the washboard and looked at my arms buried in soapsuds, I said to myself, 'What are you going to do when you grow old and your back gets stiff?' This set me to thinking, but with all my thinking I couldn't see how a poor washerwoman was going to better my condition.

I had little or no opportunity when I started out in life.

I have built my own factory on my own ground, 38 by 208 feet. I employ in that factory seven people, including a bookkeeper, a stenographer, a cook and a housegirl.

Perseverance is my motto!

The girls and women of our race must not be afraid to take hold of business endeavor and, by patient industry, close economy, determined effort and close application to business, wring success out of a number of business opportunities that lie at their very doors.

I am not ashamed of my past; I am not ashamed of my humble beginnings.

Everybody told me I was making a mistake by going into this business, but I know how to grow hair as well as I know how to grow cotton.

I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it!

I got my start by giving myself a start.

There is no royal flower strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it, for whatever success I have attained has been the result of much hard work and many sleepless nights.

If I have accomplished anything in life, it is because I have been willing to work hard.