Carter G. Woodson Quotes
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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.
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I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a lawsuit. It would do the cause much good. Let us banish fear. We have been in this mental state for three centuries. I am a radical. I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me.
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The race needs workers, not leaders.
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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.
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In schools of theology Negroes are taught the interpretation of the Bible worked out by those who have justified segregation and winked at the economic debasement of the Negro at times almost to the point of starvation.
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One can cite cases of Negroes who opposed emancipation and denounced the abolitionists.
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Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination.
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No man knows what he can do until he tries.
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The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself.
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When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.
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The real servant of the people must live among them, think with them, feel for them, and die for them.
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Our aim is to appeal to reason. … Prayer is not one of our remedies; it depends on what one is praying for. We consider prayer nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is.
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We have a wonderful history behind us. ... If you are unable to demonstrate to the world that you have this record, the world will say to you, 'You are not worthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy or anything else'.
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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.
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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.
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Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?
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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.
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I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me.
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You must give your own story to the world.
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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.
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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.
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We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world, void of national bias, race, hate, and religious prejudice. There should be no indulgence in undue eulogy of the Negro. The case of the Negro is well taken care of when it is shown how he has far influenced the development of civilization.
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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.
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I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a law suit.