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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

More quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

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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.
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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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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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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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?
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 cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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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?
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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I believe that all men, black and brown, and white, are brothers, varying, through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Men must not only know, they must act.
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
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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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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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Here is the chance for young women and young men of devotion to lift again the banner of humanity and to walk toward a civilization which will be free and intelligent which will be healthy and unafraid and build in the world a culture led by black folk and joined by peoples of all colors and all races - without poverty, ignorance and disease!
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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Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Unless modern civilization is a failure, it is entirely feasible and practicable for two races in such essential political, economic and religious harmony as the white and colored people in America, to develop side by side in peace and mutual happiness, the peculiar contribution which each has to make to the culture of their common country.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.
W. E. B. Du Bois