More Quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois
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.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.
I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong.
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 or 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.
The main thing is the YOU beneath the clothes and skin--the ability to do, the will to conquer, the determination to understand and know this great, wonderful, curious world.
A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.
Ignorance is a cure for nothing.
Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done.
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.
