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 BOISEither America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
More W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes
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Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.
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A classic is a book that doesn’t have to be written again.
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Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.
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I 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.
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Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.
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Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done.
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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.
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We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.
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Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.
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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.
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Men must not only know, they must act.
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Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.
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All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.
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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.
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Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
W. E. B. DU BOIS