More Quotes by 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.
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.
There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
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.
Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done.
The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.
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.
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.
There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.
