Carter G. Woodson Quotes

45 Sourced Quotes

This crusade is much more important than the anti- lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom.

Carter G. Woodson
History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning.

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
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
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
At this moment, then, the Negroes must begin to do the very thing which they have been taught that they cannot do.

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
Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Of the two kinds the latter is by far the more desirable. Indeed all that is most worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves.

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
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
The present system under the control of the whites trains the Negro to be white and at the same time convinces him of the impropriety or the impossibility of his becoming white... the Negros will have no outlet but to go down a blind alley, if the sort of education which they are now receiving is to enable them to find the way out of their present difficulties.

Carter G. Woodson
The bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race.

Carter G. Woodson
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.

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

Carter G. Woodson
It may be well to repeat here the saying that old men talk of what they have done, young men of what they are doing, and fools of what they expect to do. The Negro race has a rather large share of the last mentioned class.

Carter G. Woodson