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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

We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Achievement Oppression Secure Soul White Yourself
The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Need Ourselves Power Save Slave
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

Content Dangerous Education Kind Men Revolution Satisfaction
When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Book Dee Mathematics Reading Science Yourself
I believe in pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Believe Justice Myself Pride Race
Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Choice Disappointment Greatness Inspirational Life Possible Spirit
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

Hard Land Men Poor Race
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

Divine Gift Human Laughter Love Pain World Wrong
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

Children Death Disappointment Happiness Hide Music People Suffering True Way World
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

Heaven Hell Life Need Return Satisfaction Work World
A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Door Himself Look Marriage Men Stand
There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Dare Earth Oneself
The kind of sermon which is preached in most colored churches is not today attractive to even fairly intelligent men.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Atheist Color Intelligence Kind Men
Race prejudice decreases values, both real estate and human.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Human Prejudice Race Reality Value Worth
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
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

Appearance Darkness Light People Problem Race Sea
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

Appearance Beautiful Men Thinking Vision Woman World
There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Determination Equality Force Rise Woman
There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

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

Choice Democracy Destroy Ignorance
Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Human Justice Men Pain Progress
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

Better Change Death Hurt Kill People Time
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Color Design Present Problem Time
Would America have been America without her Negro people?
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Community Herself People
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

Black Devil Doubt Fire Race Sincere Woman
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

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

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

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