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The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the cause for further discrimination.

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
Color
Negro
Present
Discrimination
Stand
Tendencies
Lines
Condition
Unreasoning
Causes
Drawing
Indefinitely
Cannot
Line
Reactionary
Ever
Conditions
Reactionaries
Without
Cause
Discouragement

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The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, 'What else are women for?
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We black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.
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Harriet Tubman fought American slavery single handed and was a pioneer in that organized effort known as the Underground Railroad.
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A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself
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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.
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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?
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The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.
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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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The kind of sermon which is preached in most colored churches is not today attractive to even fairly intelligent men.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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If the unemployed could eat plans and promises, they would be able to spend the winter on the Riviera.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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It is the wind and the rain, O God, the cold and the storm that make this earth of yours to blossom and bear its fruit. So in our lives it is storm and stress and hurt and suffering that make real men and women bring the world's work to its highest perfection.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Had it not been for the race problem early thrust upon me and enveloping me, I should have probably been an unquestioning worshipper at the shrine of the established social order and of the economic development into which I was born.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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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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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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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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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Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. How does it feel to be a problem?
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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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