Carter G. Woodson Quotes, Thoughts and images

The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself.

For me, education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it and make it better.

Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.

No man knows what he can do until he tries.

If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.

The real servant of the people must live among them, think with them, feel for them, and die for them.

As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching.

In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.

The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.

The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.

When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.

In fact, the confidence of the people is worth more than money.

In the long run, there is not much discrimination against superior talent.

The race needs workers, not leaders.

The mere imparting of information is not education.

The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people.

Truth comes to us from the past, then, like gold washed down from the mountains.

I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me.

The different ness of races, moreover, is no evidence of superiority or of inferiority. This merely indicates that each race has certain gifts which the others do not possess.

Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?

If the white man wants to hold on to it, let him do so; but the Negro, so far as he is able, should develop and carry out a program of his own.

And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race.

Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination.

Even schools for Negroes, then, are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority.

The strongest bank in the United States will last only so long as the people will have sufficient confidence in it to keep their money there.

The author takes the position that the consumer pays the tax, and as such every individual of the social order should be given unlimited opportunity to make the most of himself.

If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do.