W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes - Page 3

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• I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Fire, Race, Black

  "Darkwater: The Givens Collection".

  132 Copy quote

• It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disenfranchise the public; and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Power, Thinking, Divine Right

  104 Copy quote

• One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Dark, Two, Black History

  "Strivings of the Negro People" (1897)

  27 Copy quote

• Perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of current America is the attempt to reduce life to buying and selling. Life is not love unless love is sex and bought and sold. Life is not knowledge save knowledge of technique, of science for destruction. Life is not beauty except beauty for sale. Life is not art unless its price is high and it is sold for profit. All life is production for profit, and for what is profit but for buying and selling again?

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Art, Sex, Love Is

  83 Copy quote

• There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Race, Color, Perfect

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “The World and Africa and Color and Democracy”, p.165, Oxford University Press

  75 Copy quote

• Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. How does it feel to be a problem?

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Children, Other Worlds, Feelings

  "The Souls of Black Folk". Book by W. E. B. Du Bois, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1903.

  66 Copy quote

• Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Men, Doe, Slavery

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2012). “Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil”, p.121, Courier Corporation

  8 Copy quote

• Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Government, Leader, Soul

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois”, p.49, Oxford University Press

  19 Copy quote

• A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Marriage, Wedding Anniversary, Men

  9 Copy quote

• I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Brother, Believe, Men

  "Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil".

  35 Copy quote

• Raphael painted, Luther preached, Corneille wrote, and Milton sang; and through it all, for four hundred years, the dark captives wound to the sea amid the bleaching bones of the dead: for four hundred years the sharks followed the scurrying ships; for four hundred years America was strewn with the living and dying millions of a transplanted race; for four hundred years Ethiopia stretched forth her hands unto God.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Dark, America, Race

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “Black Folk Then and Now (The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois): An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race”, p.103, Oxford University Press

  55 Copy quote

• Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Responsibility, Liberty, Firsts

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “John Brown (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois)”, p.170, Oxford University Press

  12 Copy quote

• The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; if is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from which forms the secret of civilization.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Graduation, Education, Teacher

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2016). “The Souls of Black Folk”, p.71, First Avenue Editions

  30 Copy quote

• The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, -- the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Men, Islands, Race

  The Souls of Black Folk ch. 2 (1903)

  55 Copy quote

• As Negro voting increased, Congress got an improved sense of hearing.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Voting, Hearing, Congress

  17 Copy quote

• The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Hurt, People, May

  "The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois". Book edited by Aberjhani, 2003.

  9 Copy quote

• Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Thinking, Issues, Violence

  34 Copy quote

• I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  War, School, Sunday

  22 Copy quote

• All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Mother, Trying, World

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2012). “Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil”, p.96, Courier Corporation

  48 Copy quote

• I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Men, Carpenter, Objects

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early Essays”, p.222, Oxford University Press

  5 Copy quote

• But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell:the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Dream, Soul, Ears

  23 Copy quote

• For education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Men, Revolution, Kind

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois”, p.42, Oxford University Press

  49 Copy quote

• The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this - with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need - this life is hell.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Life, Work, Bores You

  W. E. B. Du Bois' address to his newborn great-grandson on his ninetieth birthday, 1958.

  11 Copy quote

• It is the stars, it is the ancient stars, it is the young and everlasting stars!

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Stars, Ancient, Young

  8 Copy quote

• Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  White, Voting, Black

  W.E.B. Du Bois, Bob Blaisdell (2013). “W. E. B. Du Bois: Selections from His Writings”, p.160, Courier Corporation

  36 Copy quote

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