Quote

So often do you see collegians enter life with high resolve and lofty purpose and then watch them shrink and shrink to sordid, selfish, shrewd plodders, full of distrust and sneers.

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
Watches
Shrink
Watch
Shrinks
Learning
Lofty
Full
Distrust
High
Resolve
Sneers
Purpose
Enter
Shrewd
Often
Aging
Sordid
Life
Selfish
Sneer

More quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

Image
Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.
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
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
Image
The most ordinary Negro is a distinct gentleman, but it takes extraordinary training and opportunity to make the average white man anything but a hog.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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
Image
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
Image
As Negro voting increased, Congress got an improved sense of hearing.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
The music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.
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
To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, he belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambitions of our brighter minds. The way for people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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
Image
Herein lies the tragedy of the age: Not that men are poor, - all men know something of poverty. Not that men are wicked, - who is good? Not that men are ignorant, - what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
When in this world a man comes forward with a thought, a deed, a vision, we ask not how does he look, but what is his message?. . . The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty. . . .
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
Whiteness is ownership of the earth.
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
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