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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.

W. E. B. Du Bois

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W. E. B. Du Bois
Age: 95 †
Born: 1868
Born: January 1
Died: 1963
Died: August 27
Autobiographer
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Photographer
Poet
Social Worker
Great Barrington
Massachusetts
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
WEB Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois
World
Looking
Sensations
Eye
Double
Sense
Tape
Others
Contempt
Soul
Peculiar
Self
Pity
Measuring
Looks
Consciousness
Amused
Always
Eyes
Sensation

More quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

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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 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
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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, 'What else are women for?
W. E. B. Du Bois
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It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disenfranchise the public and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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If the unemployed could eat plans and promises, they would be able to spend the winter on the Riviera.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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
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It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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