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
W. E. B. DU BOISThe 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.
More W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes
-
-
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Whiteness is ownership of the earth.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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 -
Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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 -
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.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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 -
The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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 -
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 BOIS -
A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
The chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
Ignorance is a cure for nothing.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
Would America have been America without her Negro people?
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done.
W. E. B. DU BOIS