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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.

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
Much
Stones
Terrific
Merely
Oppressed
Protests
Silent
Protest
Oppressor
Physical
Costs
Oppressors
Cost
Throwing
Dissatisfaction
Spiritual
Oppression
Expresses
Need
Stands
Persistent
Needs
Mental
Bullets

More quotes by 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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Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller 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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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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To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Lord, make us mindful of the little things that grow and blossom in these days to make the world beautiful for us.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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
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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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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
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Thus all Art is propaganda and ever must be.
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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Cannot the nation that has absorbed ten million foreigners into its political life without catastrophe absorb ten million Negro Americans into that same political life at less cost than their unjust and illegal exclusion will involve?
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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
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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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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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No people can more exactly interpret the inmost meaning of the present situation in Ireland than the American Negro. The scheme is simple. You knock a man down and then have him arrested for assault. You kill a man and then hang the corpse.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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All art is propaganda...I do not care a damn, for any art that is not used for propaganda.
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 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
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We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason, if this ever becomes a reasonable world.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Ignorance is a cure for nothing.
W. E. B. Du Bois