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W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

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W. E. B. Du Bois was an influential American historian, sociologist, civil rights activist, and writer. Born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois is renowned for his advocacy for the rights of African Americans. He co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement. His seminal work, 'The Souls of Black Folk,' remains a foundational text in African American literature and thought.

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Famous W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

“Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.”

States America United United States Ignorance

Author: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.”

Men Problem America Lines Race Sea Century Color Racism Relation Islands Asia Twentieth Century Racism In America Lighters Black Racism

Author:W. E. B. Du Bois

“America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.”

America Opportunity Son

Book:The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois

Source: The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford 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.”

“Would America have been America without her Negro people?”

People Has Beens America Civil Rights Headstrong

Book:Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Source: Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

“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.”

Source: The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early Essays

“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?”

Art America Life Is Sex Love Is Destruction Extraordinary Profit Currents Productions Technique Selling Characteristics Buying Buying And Selling

Author:W. E. B. Du Bois

“How hard a thing is life to the lowly and yet how human and real is it? And all this life and love and strife and failure, - is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day? The answer lies in each of us. For somewhere in your past ... somewhere some 100 years ago?there rose from the smoldering ashes of slavery?a proud and humble family who suffered and struggled with life. A family who found the strength to endure all the indignities of life in America, and that family had the hope for a taste of her bounties in the future.”

“Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.”

World Humans Littles America Spirit Given New World Rude Human Spirit Bosoms Grandeur Ingenuity Vigor

Book:The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk

“Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation, - we have fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to despise not Justice, Mercy and Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil, our cheer and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this worth the striving? Would America have been America without her Negro People?”

“Raphael painted, Luther preached, Corneille wrote, and Milton sang; and through it all, for four hundred years, the dark captives wound to the sea amid the bleaching bones of the dead: for four hundred years the sharks followed the scurrying ships; for four hundred years America was strewn with the living and dying millions of a transplanted race; for four hundred years Ethiopia stretched forth her hands unto God.”

Source: Black Folk Then and Now (The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois): An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race