W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes - Page 3

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• Perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of current America is the attempt to reduce life to buying and selling. Life is not love unless love is sex and bought and sold. Life is not knowledge save knowledge of technique, of science for destruction. Life is not beauty except beauty for sale. Life is not art unless its price is high and it is sold for profit. All life is production for profit, and for what is profit but for buying and selling again?

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Art, Sex, Love Is

  83 Copy quote

• 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

  Work, Future, Motherhood

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2012). “Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil”, p.96, Courier Corporation

  23 Copy quote

• Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Government, Leader, Soul

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois”, p.49, Oxford University Press

  19 Copy quote

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

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Fire, Play, Mind

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2016). “The Souls of Black Folk”, p.75, First Avenue Editions

  21 Copy quote

• Lord of the springtime, Father of flower, field and fruit, smile on us in these earnest days when the work is heavy and the toil wearisome; lift up our hearts, O God, to the things worthwhile-sunshine and night, the dripping rain, the song of the birds, books and music, and the voices of our friends. Lift up our hearts to these this night and grant us Thy peace. Amen.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Song, Spring, Father

  W. E. B. Du Bois (1980). “Prayers for Dark People”

  22 Copy quote

• 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.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Men, Yellow, Black

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2013). “Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880”, p.13, Transaction Publishers

  69 Copy quote

• Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. How does it feel to be a problem?

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Children, Other Worlds, Feelings

  "The Souls of Black Folk". Book by W. E. B. Du Bois, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1903.

  66 Copy quote

• Would America have been America without her Negro people?

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  America, People, Civil Rights

  W. E. B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington (2012). “Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, p.329, Courier Corporation

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Mean, Men, Race

  28 Copy quote

• 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.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Teacher, Teaching, You Like It

  W.E.B. Du Bois, Bob Blaisdell (2013). “W. E. B. Du Bois: Selections from His Writings”, p.60, Courier Corporation

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  White, Soul, Oppression

  40 Copy quote

• Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Thinking, Issues, Violence

  34 Copy quote

• Lord, make us mindful of the little things that grow and blossom in these days to make the world beautiful for us.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Beauty, Beautiful, Religion

  W. E. B. Du Bois (1980). “Prayers for Dark People”

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Graduation, Education, Teacher

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2016). “The Souls of Black Folk”, p.71, First Avenue Editions

  30 Copy quote

• I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Men, Carpenter, Objects

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early Essays”, p.222, Oxford University Press

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Mother, Trying, World

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2012). “Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil”, p.96, Courier Corporation

  48 Copy quote

• But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell:the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Dream, Soul, Ears

  23 Copy quote

• 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.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Men, Islands, Race

  The Souls of Black Folk ch. 2 (1903)

  55 Copy quote

• A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Marriage, Wedding Anniversary, Men

  9 Copy quote

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

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Men, Revolution, Kind

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois”, p.42, Oxford University Press

  49 Copy quote

• It is the stars, it is the ancient stars, it is the young and everlasting stars!

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Stars, Ancient, Young

  8 Copy quote

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

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  White, Voting, Black

  W.E.B. Du Bois, Bob Blaisdell (2013). “W. E. B. Du Bois: Selections from His Writings”, p.160, Courier Corporation

  36 Copy quote

• I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  War, School, Sunday

  22 Copy quote

• Life has its pains and evils-its bitter disappointments; but like a good novel and in healthful length of days, there is infinite joy in seeing the World, the most interesting of continued stories, unfold.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Uplifting, Pain, Disappointment

  22 Copy quote

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

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Responsibility, Liberty, Firsts

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “John Brown (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois)”, p.170, Oxford University Press

  12 Copy quote

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