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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

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

Believe Black Brother Development Men Myself Opportunity Possible Soul Time
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 Difficult Feeling Frame Right
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

Education Man Myself True
The emancipation of man is the emancipation of labor and the emancipation of labor is the freeing of that basic majority of workers who are yellow, brown and black.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Black Freedom Man Work
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

Failure Follow Honesty Liberty Wrong
We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason, if this ever becomes a reasonable world.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Escape Reason Run Win World
In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Believe Democracy Election Evil Existence Myself Vote
Men must not only know, they must act.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Action Man
The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Black Fall History Past Shadow Stars World
There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Determination Equality Force Rise Woman
Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Choice Democracy Destroy Ignorance
The favorite device of the devil, ancient and modern, is to force a human being into a more or less artificial class, accuse the class of unnamed and unnameable sin, and then damn any individual in the alleged class, however innocent he may be.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Class Device Devil Diversity Innocent Justice Sin
The world is shrinking together; it is finding itself neighbor to itself in strange, almost magic degree.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Magic Strange Togetherness World
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Color Design Present Problem Time
Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody’s slavery.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Deep Freedom Men Slave
Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Education Life Simplicity Teaching Thinking Work

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

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

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