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We cannot hope, then, in this generation, or for several generations, that the mass of the whites can be brought to assume that close sympathetic and self-sacrificing leadership of the blacks which their present situation so eloquently demands. Such leadership, such social teaching and example, must come from the blacks themselves.

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
Cannot
Close
Several
Eloquently
Come
Generations
Assuming
Sacrificing
Self
Teaching
Brought
Whites
Must
Example
Generation
Blacks
Present
Demand
Sympathetic
Situation
Sacrifice
Patriotism
Hope
Mass
Assume
Social
Leadership
Demands

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Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
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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.
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How shall Integrity face Oppression?
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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.
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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.
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The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people.
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Men must not only know, they must act.
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No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.
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I believe that all men, black and brown, and white, are brothers, varying, through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development.
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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.
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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
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In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no 'two evils' exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.
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Race prejudice decreases values, both real estate and human.
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.
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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.
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Half the Christian churches of New York are trying to ruin the free public schools in order to replace them by religious dogma.
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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.
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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
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Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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