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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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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
Ignorance
Feared
Knowledge
Negro
White
Efficiency
Thing
Unfortunately
Merit
Racism
Incompetency
Honesty
Incompetence
South
Dishonesty

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I believe in pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.
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Race prejudice decreases values, both real estate and human.
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The most ordinary Negro is a distinct gentleman, but it takes extraordinary training and opportunity to make the average white man anything but a hog.
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A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself
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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.
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The main thing is the YOU beneath the clothes and skin--the ability to do, the will to conquer, the determination to understand and know this great, wonderful, curious world.
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No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.
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Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.
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There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.
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I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war.
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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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A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The emancipation of man is the emancipation of labor and the emancipation of labor is the freeing of that basic majority of workers who are yellow, brown and black.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.
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To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.
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The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The merchant must be no more pessimist than optimist, since pessimism induces him to hold back his capital but optimism induces him to take such risks that he has more to tear than to hope. Abu al'Fadl Ja'far al-Dimishqi (c. 9th century) Arab writer. The Beauties of Commerce Business pays ... philanthropy begs.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Men must not only know, they must act.
W. E. B. Du Bois