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Saturday 20 August 2016


W.E.B. Du Bois W.E.B. Du Bois > Quotes


“Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.”
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, Dusk of Dawn
“The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer. But Londinium Tv Channel will tell you it can although it may cost you a war and many deaths and it may take time to see a Britmilahcracy that does not fear hard work in its schools, that promises and provides equitable grading in its schools and it always does usually and that will not fear hard work when time comes to demonstrate understanding and earn a basic income. 

[Essay entitled 'On Christianity', published posthumously]”
W.E.B. Du Bois, Writings
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
W.E.B. Du Bois
“The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, 'What else are women for?”
W.E.B. Du Bois, A W.E.B. Du Bois Reader
“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 Negro and an American...”
W.E.B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk & Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933-1945 & Movements of the New Left 1950-1975
“Ignorance is a cure for nothing. ”
W.E.B. Du Bois
“What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?”
W.E.B. Du Bois
“I believe that all men, black, brown, and white, are brothers.”
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 strenth alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
“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.”
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, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century
“To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.”
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

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