W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.”
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“Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.”
-- W. E. B. Du BoisSource : W. E. B. Du Bois (1980). “Prayers for Dark People”
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“Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other.”
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“A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect”
-- W. E. B. Du Bois -
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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.”
-- W. E. B. Du Bois -
“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 Bois -
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
-- W. E. B. Du BoisSource : John Brown ch. 13 (1909)
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“One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner . . . and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.”
-- W. E. B. Du BoisSource : "Whitewashing Black History Month" by Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. February 1, 2012.
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“Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.”
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“There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.”
-- W. E. B. Du BoisSource : W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “Dusk of Dawn (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois)”, p.62, Oxford University Press
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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.”
-- W. E. B. Du BoisSource : The Souls of Black Folk ch. 1 (1903)
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“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 -
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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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“Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.”
-- 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 and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.”
-- W. E. B. Du BoisSource : W. E. B. Du Bois (1980). “Prayers for Dark People”
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“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.”
-- W. E. B. Du Bois -
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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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“Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.”
-- W. E. B. Du BoisSource : W.E.B. Du Bois (2013). “W. E. B. Du Bois: Selections from His Writings”, p.60, Courier Corporation
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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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“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.”
-- W. E. B. Du Bois -
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“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 -
“A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself”
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“The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the cause for further discrimination.”
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“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 -
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“As Negro voting increased, Congress got an improved sense of hearing.”
-- W. E. B. Du Bois -
“There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise”
-- W. E. B. Du Bois -
“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”
-- W. E. B. Du Bois -
“The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; if is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from which forms the secret of civilization.”
-- W. E. B. Du Bois -
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“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.”
-- 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.”
-- W. E. B. Du Bois
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