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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.

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
Men
Sea
Darker
Line
Twentieth
Color
Races
Century
Asia
Lines
Islands
Race
Africa
America
Racism
Lighters
Problem
Relation
Lighter

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And yet not a dream, but a mighty reality- a glimpse of the higher life, the broader possibilities of humanity, which is granted to the man who, amid the rush and roar of living, pauses four short years to learn what living means
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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
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.
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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.
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Race prejudice decreases values, both real estate and human.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The emancipation of man is the emancipation of labor and the emancipation of labor is the freeing of that basic majority of workers who are yellow, brown and black.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?
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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But art is not simply works of art it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its soul and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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
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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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I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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
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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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Today I see more clearly than yesterday that the back of the problem of race and color lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance, and disease of the majority of their fellow men.
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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Ignorance is a cure for nothing.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.
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