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 BOISWhen 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 BOISOne thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.
W. E. B. DU BOISThere is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
W. E. B. DU BOISThe power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
W. E. B. DU BOISWe shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.
W. E. B. DU BOISUnfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.
W. E. B. DU BOISWhiteness is ownership of the earth.
W. E. B. DU BOISRace prejudice decreases values, both real estate and human.
W. E. B. DU BOISBut 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 BOISA 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 BOISI insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.
W. E. B. DU BOISI have loved my work, I have loved people and my play, but always I have been uplifted by the thought that what I have done well will live long and justify my life, that what I have done ill or never finished can now be handed on to others for endless days to be finished, perhaps better than I could have done.
W. E. B. DU BOISDisfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.
W. E. B. DU BOISThe cause of war is preparation for war.
W. E. B. DU BOISThe 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 BOISThe 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