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To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.

W. E. B. Du Bois

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
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
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
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
Would America have been America without her Negro people?
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Community Herself People
There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Dare Earth Oneself
There may often be excuse for doing things poorly in this world, but there is never any excuse for calling a poorly done thing, well done.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Job Poor Work World
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
So often do you see collegians enter life with high resolve and lofty purpose and then watch them shrink and shrink to sordid, selfish, shrewd plodders, full of distrust and sneers.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Learning Life Purpose Selfish Trust
But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell:the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Demand Dream Expression Freedom Human Soul Spirit
Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Choice Democracy Destroy Ignorance
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
To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Fire Mindset Play Training Weakness Wild
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
Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.
W. E. B. DU BOIS

Black Identity Poor Protection Rich Theft White
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

To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.

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To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.

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