Herein lies the tragedy of the age: Not that men are poor, – all men know something of poverty. Not that men are wicked, – who is good? Not that men are ignorant, – what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.
W. E. B. DU BOISUnfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.
More W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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 -
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 -
There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise.
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 -
In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.
W. E. B. DU BOIS -
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 -
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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The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.
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There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.
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Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.
W. E. B. DU BOIS