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Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
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
Ignorance
Either
United
America
States
Destroy
More quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois
Liberty trains for liberty.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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
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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
...in any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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
Harriet Tubman fought American slavery single handed and was a pioneer in that organized effort known as the Underground Railroad.
W. E. B. Du Bois
The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the cause for further discrimination.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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
To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
W. E. B. Du Bois
No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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
Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stands up and protests. The protest need not be merely physical-the throwing of stones and bullets-if it is mental, spiritual if it expresses itself in silent, persistent dissatisfaction, the cost to the oppressor is terrific.
W. E. B. Du Bois
America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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
Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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
Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.
W. E. B. Du Bois
There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
W. E. B. Du Bois
