W. E. B. Du Bois quotes

W. E. B. Du Bois was an influential American sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist. A prominent intellectual, he co-founded the NAACP and became a leading voice for African American equality. He dedicated his life to fighting racial injustice and advancing education. Here are 96 of his quotes:

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)
Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
Herein lies the tragedy of the age not that men are poor all men know something of poverty not that men are wicked who is good Not that men are ignorant what is truth Nay, but that men know so little of men. View quote
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. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the worlds 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. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery? View quote
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)
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. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
The world is shrinking together; it is finding itself neighbor to itself in strange, almost magic degree. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty for Beauty to set the world right. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men. View quote
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 and 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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
The cause of war is preparation for war. (W. E. B. Du Bois)
I believe that there are human stocks with whom it is physically unwise to intermarry, but to think that these stocks are all colored or that there are no such white stocks is unscientific and false. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
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. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
It is, then, the strife of all honorable men and women of the twentieth century to see that in the future competition of the races the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the true; that we may be able to preserve for future civilization all that is really fine and noble and strong, and not continue to put a premium on greed and imprudence and cruelty. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois
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. View quote
W. E. B. Du Bois