Ten Thought-Provoking Quotes by W.E.B. Du Bois

“But what of black women?… I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.”

“For education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.”

“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. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.”

“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. One ever feels his two-ness,— an American, a [Black]… two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.”

“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost… He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a [Black] and an American…”

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

“How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.”

“I believe that all men, black, brown, and white, are brothers.”

“Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.”