Quotes by "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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Let us banish fear.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.