Quote

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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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
Persons
Willing
Yesterday
Back
Race
Majority
Implements
Live
Greater
Disease
Obscures
Many
Lying
Comfort
Civilized
Even
Fact
Ignorance
Fellow
Men
Facts
Lies
Fellows
Problem
Poverty
Clearly
Today
Color
Price

More quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

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It is the stars, it is the ancient stars, it is the young and everlasting stars!
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The dark world is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
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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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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I have loved my work, I have loved people and my play, but always I have been uplifted by the thought that what I have done well will live long and justify my life, that what I have done ill or never finished can now be handed on to others for endless days to be finished, perhaps better than I could have done.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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
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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
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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.
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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Whiteness is ownership of the earth.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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
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There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise
W. E. B. Du Bois
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As Negro voting increased, Congress got an improved sense of hearing.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.
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 true college will ever have but one goal - not to earn meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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But we do not merely protest we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell:the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois