WISDOM OF CARTER G. WOODSON

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.
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 mere imparting of information is not education.
Carter G. Woodson

The Negroes are facing the alternative of rising in the sphere of production to supply their proportion of the manufacturers and merchants or of going down to the graves of paupers.
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

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.
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am a radical.
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

I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me.
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 Liberia has failed, then, it is no evidence of the failure of the Negro in government. It is merely evidence of the failure of slavery.
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

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

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

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

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

Let us banish fear.
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

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

One can cite cases of Negroes who opposed emancipation and denounced the abolitionists.
Carter G. Woodson

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

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.
Carter G. Woodson

The educational system of a country is worthless unless it [revolutionizes the social order]. Men of scholarship, and prophetic insight, must show us the right way and lead us into light which is shining brighter and brighter.

If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one.

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