W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes (27 Quotes)

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.

But what of black women?... I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.

Histories of the world omitted China if a Chinaman invented compass or movable type or gunpowder we promptly forgot it and named their European inventors. In short, we regarded China as a sort of different and quite inconsequential planet.

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.

The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.

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.

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....

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

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.

Would America have been America without her Negro people.

Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.

We black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.

Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.

If there is anybody in this land who thoroughly believes that the meek shall inherit the earth they have not often let their presence be known.

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

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.

The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the worlds 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.

A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.

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.

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.

I believe in pride of race and lineage and self in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.

Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.

The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?

The dark world is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer.

The music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.

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