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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

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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
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

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I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.
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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
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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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Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down... Education must not simply teach work - it must teach life.
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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
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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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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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It is the wind and the rain, O God, the cold and the storm that make this earth of yours to blossom and bear its fruit. So in our lives it is storm and stress and hurt and suffering that make real men and women bring the world's work to its highest perfection.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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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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
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...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
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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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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
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The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society if is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from which forms the secret of civilization.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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
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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
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Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.
W. E. B. Du Bois