W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

115 Sourced Quotes

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

W. E. B. Du Bois
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

W. E. B. Du Bois
A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.

W. E. B. Du Bois
The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.

W. E. B. Du Bois
In the treatment of the child the world foreshadows its own future and faith. All words and all thinking lead to the child, - to that vast immortality and wide sweep of infinite possibility which the child represents.

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
Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. Education must not simply teach work— it must teach Life.

W. E. B. Du Bois
It is the wind and the rain, O God, the cold and the storm that make this earth of yours to blossom and bear its fruit. So in our lives it is storm and stress and hurt and suffering that make real men and women bring the world's work to its highest perfection.

W. E. B. Du Bois
Would America have been America without her Negro people?

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

W. E. B. Du Bois
The music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.

W. E. B. Du Bois
When in this world a man comes forward with a thought, a deed, a vision, we ask not how does he look, but what is his message?... The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty....

W. E. B. Du Bois
We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong - this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it.

W. E. B. Du Bois
There are still a few of us who are running away to avoid each other with the vague feeling that we shall thus lose ourselves in the world and be free.

W. E. B. Du Bois
How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.

W. E. B. Du Bois
I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty for Beauty to set the world right.

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
Not even a Harvard School of Business can turn greed into a science.

W. E. B. Du Bois
I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls; the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love.

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
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
Lord of the springtime, Father of flower, field and fruit, smile on us in these earnest days when the work is heavy and the toil wearisome; lift up our hearts, O God, to the things worthwhile-sunshine and night, the dripping rain, the song of the birds, books and music, and the voices of our friends. Lift up our hearts to these this night and grant us Thy peace. Amen.

W. E. B. Du Bois
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour 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
And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with his age is a mark of the successful man. It is as though Nature needs must make men narrow in order to give them force.

W. E. B. Du Bois