It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disenfranchise the public; and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind.
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.
More W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes
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The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people.
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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.
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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.
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I believe in pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.
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Would America have been America without her Negro people?
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A classic is a book that doesn’t have to be written again.
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One 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.
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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.
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The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
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It is the wind and the rain, O God, the cold and the storm that make this earth of yours to blossom and bear its fruit. So in our lives it is storm and stress and hurt and suffering that make real men and women bring the world’s work to its highest perfection.
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There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise.
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There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise.
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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.
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The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.
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No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.
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The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
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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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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.
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To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
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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.
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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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Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, – this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society
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Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
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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 -
Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.
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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