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No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.

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

Ancient Nature Stars Young
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.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Art Color Dance Flame Simplicity Sunset Work World
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

Glory Pay Simplicity Thinking Truth Work
One ever feels his twoness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Alone Body Darkness Feeling Soul Strength
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 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

Future Independence Life Mom Right Work
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
Men must not only know, they must act.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Action Man
Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Black Crime Easy Oppression World
The main thing is the YOU beneath the clothes and skin–the ability to do, the will to conquer, the determination to understand and know this great, wonderful, curious world.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Ability Clothes Determination Greatness Skin Wonderful World
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
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
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
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
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
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

No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.

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No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.

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