Quote

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.

W. E. B. Du Bois

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Feels
Strength
Torn
Alone
Souls
Dark
Keeps
American
Strive
Strivings
Two
Folks
Dogged
Body
Ideals
Warring
Soul
Whose
Asunder
Ever
Thoughts
Negro

More quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

Image
We black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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
Image
The severest charge that can be brought against the Christian education of the Negro in the South during the last thirty years is the reckless way in which sap-headed young fellows, without ability, and, in some cases, without character, have been urged and pushed into the ministry.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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
Image
No people can more exactly interpret the inmost meaning of the present situation in Ireland than the American Negro. The scheme is simple. You knock a man down and then have him arrested for assault. You kill a man and then hang the corpse.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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
Image
I have loved my work, I have loved people and my play, but always I have been uplifted by the thought that what I have done well will live long and justify my life, that what I have done ill or never finished can now be handed on to others for endless days to be finished, perhaps better than I could have done.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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
Image
Whiteness is ownership of the earth.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
I believe in pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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?
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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
Image
If you want to feel humor too exquisite and subtle for translation, sit invisibly among a gang of Negro workers.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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 Bois
Image
One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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