W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

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The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American...

W. E. B. Du Bois
There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.

W. E. B. Du Bois
Out of the temptation of Hate, and burned by the fire of Despair, triumphant over Doubt, and steeled by Sacrifice against Humiliation,... He bent to all the gibes and prejudices, to all hatred and discrimination with that rare courtesy which is the armor of pure souls.... he simply worked, inspiring the young, rebuking the old, helping the weak, guiding the strong.

W. E. B. Du Bois
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
Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.

W. E. B. Du Bois
I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong.

W. E. B. Du Bois
The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.

W. E. B. Du Bois
The world is shrinking together; it is finding itself neighbor to itself in strange, almost magic degree.

W. E. B. Du Bois
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
We do not countenance violence. Our fight is against violence. We are fighting as we always have fought—for the reign of law over the reign of the mob.

W. E. B. Du Bois
Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.

W. E. B. Du Bois
Lord, make us mindful of the little things that grow and blossom in these days to make the world beautiful for us.

W. E. B. Du Bois
I believe that there are human stocks with whom it is physically unwise to intermarry, but to think that these stocks are all colored or that there are no such white stocks is unscientific and false.

W. E. B. Du Bois
I believe in God who made of one blood all races that dwell on earth. 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 in the possibility of infinite development.

W. E. B. Du Bois
If the unemployed could eat plans and promises, they would be able to spend the winter on the Riviera.

W. E. B. Du Bois
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others.... One 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
But art is not simply works of art; it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its soul and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs; that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.

W. E. B. Du Bois
There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for.

W. E. B. Du Bois
The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.

W. E. B. Du Bois
The chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime.

W. E. B. Du Bois
Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.

W. E. B. Du Bois
And yet not a dream, but a mighty reality- a glimpse of the higher life, the broader possibilities of humanity, which is granted to the man who, amid the rush and roar of living, pauses four short years to learn what living means

W. E. B. Du Bois
The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.

W. E. B. Du Bois
The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.

W. E. B. Du Bois
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