W. E. B. Du Bois
A prominent sociologist, civil rights activist, and co-founder of the NAACP, known for his concept of 'double consciousness' and studies of race in America.
Quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois
The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.
One ever feels his two-ness,—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 history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.
Education and work are the levers to uplift a people.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
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.
The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.
The chief cause of the present condition of the Negro in the United States is the slavery and degradation of his ancestors.
Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental.
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. Without it, it is hell.
A system of education that does not look to the future is a system of education that does not look at all.
The power of the ballot we need in self-defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
The most important thing to remember is that you can do anything you want to do.
The South is not a problem; it is a symptom.
The cause of war is preparation for war.
The world is a world of men, and not of angels.
The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.
The United States is a land of magnificent possibilities, but it is also a land of magnificent failures.
The function of the university is not to teach bread-winning, or to amuse students, or to make them expert in certain games, or to give them an admirable social life, but to be a center of truth.