William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer, and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community, and after completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. These WEB Du Bois quotes will motivate you.
Best WEB Du Bois Quotes
- “Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “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
- “Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
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“There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong – this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner . . . and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
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“Education must not simply teach work it must teach life.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “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.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “Today I see more clearly than yesterday that the back of the problem of race and color lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance, and disease of the majority of their fellow men.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
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“Ignorance is a cure for nothing.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “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.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “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
- “There may often be an 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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“No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, – this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “This the American black man knows: his fight here is a fight to the finish. Either he dies or wins. If he wins it will be by no subterfuge or evasion of amalgamation. He will enter modern civilization here in America as a black man on terms of perfect and unlimited equality with any white man, or he will enter not at all. Either extermination root and branch, or absolute equality. There can be no compromise. This is the last great battle of the west.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disenfranchise the public; and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois\
- “There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
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“Men must not only know, they must act.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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.” ~ WEB Du Bois Quotes
- “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
- “The favorite device of the devil, ancient and modern, is to force a human being into a more or less artificial class, accuse the class of unnamed and unnameable sin, and then damn any individual in the alleged class, however innocent he may be.” ~ 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
- “We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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 the possibility of infinite development.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
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“As Negro voting increased, Congress got an improved sense of hearing.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “Would America have been America without her Negro people?” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “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.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “Perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of current America is the attempt to reduce life to buying and selling. Life is not love unless love is sex and bought and sold. Life is not knowledge save knowledge of technique, of science for destruction. Life is not beauty except beauty for sale. Life is not art unless its price is high and it is sold for profit. All life is production for profit, and for what is profit but for buying and selling again?” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
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“Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “Lord of the springtime, Father of flower, field and fruit, smile on us in these earnest days when the work is heavy and the toil wearisome; lift up our hearts, O God, to the things worthwhile-sunshine and night, the dripping rain, the song of the birds, books, and music, and the voices of our friends. Lift up our hearts to these this night and grant us Thy peace. Amen.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “One ever feels his twoness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell: the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
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“The cause of war is preparation for war.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, — the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.” ~ WEB Du Bois Quotes
- “Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
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“Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody’s slavery.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “For education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason, if this ever becomes a reasonable world.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “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
- “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
- “The world is shrinking together; it is finding itself neighbor to itself in strange, almost magic degree.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
