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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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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
World
Often
May
Wells
Well
Done
Thing
Poorly
Things
Excuse
Never
Calling

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The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
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Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.
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In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no 'two evils' exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.
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No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.
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The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.
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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.
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At best, the natural good-nature is edged with complaint or has changed into sullenness and gloom. And now and then it blazes forth in veiled but hot anger.
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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.
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To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
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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.
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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.
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Whiteness is ownership of the earth.
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The kind of sermon which is preached in most colored churches is not today attractive to even fairly intelligent men.
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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.
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We cannot hope, then, in this generation, or for several generations, that the mass of the whites can be brought to assume that close sympathetic and self-sacrificing leadership of the blacks which their present situation so eloquently demands. Such leadership, such social teaching and example, must come from the blacks themselves.
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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.
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Men must not only know, they must act.
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Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.
W. E. B. Du Bois