W. E. B. Du Bois

Quotes

• “The use of slave women as day workers naturally broke up or made impossible the normal Negro home, and this and the slav...”
• “From the very first, it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, a...”
• “Like Nemesis of Greek tragedy, the central problem of America after the Civil War, as before, was the black man: those f...”
• “Before and after emancipation, the Negro, in self-defense, was propelled toward the white employer. The endowments of we...”
• “From the day of its birth, the anomaly of slavery plagued a nation which asserted the equality of all men, and sought to...”
• “The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negro...”
• “School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, ...”
• “I believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell. I believe that all men, black and brown and ...”
• “There was not a single Negro slave owner who did not know dozens of Negroes just as capable of learning and efficiency a...”
• “I believe in the Prince of Peace. I believe that War is Murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinse...”
• “I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to...”
• “Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledg...”
• “For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They w...”
• “A system of education is not one thing, nor does it have a single definite object, nor is it a mere matter of schools. E...”
• “One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring idea...”
• “No universal selfishness can bring social good to all. Communism - the effort to give all men what they need and to ask ...”
• “An American, a Negro... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose ...”
• “A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a th...”
• “But what of black women?... I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through...”
• “Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than right, justice and plain common-...”
• “Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women's suffrage.”
• “Education must not simply teach work - it must teach Life.”
• “Education and work are the levers to uplift a people.”
• “Education is the development of power and ideal.”