Top 35 Carter G. Woodson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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.”

— Carter G. Woodson

2. “The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself.”

— Carter G. Woodson

3. “When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.”

— Carter G. Woodson

4. “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

5. “No man knows what he can do until he tries.”

— Carter G. Woodson

6. “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

7. “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

8. “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.”

— Carter G. Woodson

9. “In the long run, there is not much discrimination against superior talent.”

— Carter G. Woodson

10. “You must give your own story to the world.”

— Carter G. Woodson

11. “No people can go forward when the majority of those who should know better have chosen to go backward, but this is exactly what most of our misleaders do.”

— Carter G. Woodson

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

— Carter G. Woodson

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

— Carter G. Woodson

14. “The real servant of the people must live among them, think with them, feel for them, and die for them.”

— Carter G. Woodson

15. “The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.”

— Carter G. Woodson

16. “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

17. “If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.”

— Carter G. Woodson

18. “Truth must be dug up from the past and presented to the circle of scholastics in scientific form and then through stories and dramatizations that will permeate our educational system.”

— Carter G. Woodson

19. “The race needs workers, not leaders.”

— Carter G. Woodson

20. “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.”

— Carter G. Woodson

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

— Carter G. Woodson

22. “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

23. “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

24. “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

25. “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

26. “The mere imparting of information is not education.”

— Carter G. Woodson

27. “They are anxious to have everything the white man has even if it is harmful.”

— Carter G. Woodson

28. “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.”

— Carter G. Woodson

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

— Carter G. Woodson

30. “Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?”

— Carter G. Woodson

31. “From literature the African was excluded altogether. He was not supposed to have expressed any thought worth knowing. The philosophy in the African proverbs and in the rich folklore of that continent was ignored to give preference to that developed on the distant shores of the Mediterranean.”

— Carter G. Woodson

32. “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

33. “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

34. “The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself just as the Jews have done in spite of universal persecution.”

— Carter G. Woodson

35. “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.”

— Carter G. Woodson

36. “The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worth while, depresses.”

— Carter G. Woodson

37. “Cooperation implies equality of the participants in the particular task at hand.”

— Carter G. Woodson

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

— Carter G. Woodson

39. “The differentness 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. It is by the development of these gifts that every race must justify its right to exist.”

— Carter G. Woodson