Quote

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

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
Black
Oasis
Seems
Sole
Men
Reverence
Desert
Dollars
Seem
Simple
Smartness
Faith
Dusty

More quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

Image
The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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
Image
The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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.
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
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
Image
I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty for Beauty to set the world right.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
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
Image
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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this - with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need - this life is hell.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Image
I believe that there are human stocks with whom it is physically unwise to intermarry, but to think that these stocks are all colored or that there are no such white stocks is unscientific and false.
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 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
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