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.”

“If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.”

“The mere imparting of information is not education.”

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

“The 'educated Negroes' have the attitude of contempt toward their own people because in their own as well as in their mixed schools they are taught to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton and to despise the African.”

“We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history.”

“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.”

“If you are going to control a people, you must first control what they think about themselves and the world.”

“It is not the physical slavery of the body that is the major problem, but the mental slavery of the mind.”

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

“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.”

“The oppressors of yesterday are the liberals of today.”