W.E.B. Du Bois Quotes

Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.

There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.

Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.

There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise

Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.

We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong - this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it.

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

I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong.

Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.

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

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done.

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

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.

There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.

The 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.

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.

For education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.

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 cause of war is preparation for war.

We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.

The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.

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.

Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.

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

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.

Ignorance is a cure for nothing.

There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.

Men must not only know, they must act.

Most men in this world are colored. A belief in humanity means a belief in colored men. The future world will, in all reasonable probability, be what colored men make it.

We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason, if this ever becomes a reasonable world.

No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.

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

Whiteness is ownership of the earth.

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

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.

What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?

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

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

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

As Negro voting increased, Congress got an improved sense of hearing.

Harriet Tubman fought American slavery single handed and was a pioneer in that organized effort known as the Underground Railroad.

The main thing is the YOU beneath the clothes and skin--the ability to do, the will to conquer, the determination to understand and know this great, wonderful, curious world.

There may often be excuse for doing things poorly in this world, but there is never any excuse for calling a poorly done thing, well done.

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.

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

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.

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 world is shrinking together; it is finding itself neighbor to itself in strange, almost magic degree.

Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down... Education must not simply teach work - it must teach life.