Carter G. Woodson Quotes

Author Image

Carter G. Woodson

Profession : Historian

Birth : December 19, 1875

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

Carter G. Woodson

This assumption of Negro leadership in the ghetto, then, must not be confined to matters of religion, education, and social uplift; it must deal with such fundamental forces in life as make these things possible.

Carter G. Woodson

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.

Carter G. Woodson

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.

Carter G. Woodson

The mere imparting of information is not education.

Carter G. Woodson

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

Carter G. Woodson

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

Carter G. Woodson

Our most widely known scholars have been trained in universities outside of the South.

Carter G. Woodson

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.

Carter G. Woodson

Negro banks, as a rule, have failed because the people, taught that their own pioneers in business cannot function in this sphere, withdrew their deposits.

Carter G. Woodson

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.

Carter G. Woodson

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.

Carter G. Woodson

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

Carter G. Woodson

They still have some money, and they have needs to supply. They must begin immediately to pool their earnings and organize industries to participate in supplying social and economic demands.

Carter G. Woodson

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.

Carter G. Woodson

The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.

Carter G. Woodson

We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just.

Carter G. Woodson

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.

Carter G. Woodson

I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a law suit.

Carter G. Woodson

Let us banish fear.

Carter G. Woodson