W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Boiswas an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth23 February 1868
CountryUnited States of America
The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.
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.
A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself
The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
If you want to feel humor too exquisite and subtle for translation, sit invisibly among a gang of Negro workers.
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.
But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell:the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.
To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.
But art is not simply works of art; it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its soul and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs; that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.
The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.
Men must not only know, they must act.
The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this - with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need - this life is hell.
Life has its pains and evils-its bitter disappointments; but like a good novel and in healthful length of days, there is infinite joy in seeing the World, the most interesting of continued stories, unfold...
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.