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

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
Classic
Written
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More quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

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Liberty trains for liberty.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.
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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There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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
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To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself
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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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
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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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Ignorance is a cure for nothing.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Here is the chance for young women and young men of devotion to lift again the banner of humanity and to walk toward a civilization which will be free and intelligent which will be healthy and unafraid and build in the world a culture led by black folk and joined by peoples of all colors and all races - without poverty, ignorance and disease!
W. E. B. Du Bois
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All men cannot go to college but some men must every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their bellies, and no God greater than Gold.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.
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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Had it not been for the race problem early thrust upon me and enveloping me, I should have probably been an unquestioning worshipper at the shrine of the established social order and of the economic development into which I was born.
W. E. B. Du Bois