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" 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. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Rights
Credit
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" Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage ground. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Push
Progress
Man
" Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Men
House
Training
" A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Classic
Again
Book
" There was not a single Negro slave owner who did not know dozens of Negroes just as capable of learning and efficiency as the mass of poor white people around and about, and some quite as capable as the average slaveholder. They had continually, in the course of the history of slavery, recognized such men. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
History
Learning
Men
" 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. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Soul
Eyes
Looking
" The ruling of men is the effort to direct the individual actions of many persons toward some end. This end theoretically should be the greatest good of all, but no human group has ever reached this ideal because of ignorance and selfishness. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Ignorance
Men
Group
" All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Care
Black
Stand
" The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing - a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
World
Personal
Matter
" If the leading Negro classes cannot assume and bear the uplift of their own proletariat, they are doomed for all time. It is not a case of ethics; it is a plain case of necessity. The method by which this may be done is, first, for the American Negro to achieve a new economic solidarity. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Time
American
Achieve
" It can be safely asserted that since early Colonial times, the North has had a distinct race problem. Every one of these States had slaves, and at the beginning of Washington's Administration, there were 40,000 black slaves and 17,000 black freemen in this section. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Race
Beginning
Black
" A system of education is not one thing, nor does it have a single definite object, nor is it a mere matter of schools. Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Training
Men
House
" A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons and lowers. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
People
True
False
" North as well as South, the Negroes have emerged from slavery into a serfdom of poverty and restricted rights. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Slavery
Rights
Poverty
" An American, a Negro... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Thoughts
Strength
American
" The Negro was freed and turned loose as a penniless, landless, naked, ignorant laborer. Ninety-nine per cent were field hands and servants of the lowest class. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Naked
Ignorant
Hands
" 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. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Through
Race
Fire
" I believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Gift
Men
Soul
" Make yourself do unpleasant things so as to gain the upper hand of your soul. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Yourself
Soul
Hand
" The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Twentieth Century
Problem
Line
" The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Death
Men
Problem
" Strange, is it not, my brothers, how often in America those great watchwords of human energy - 'Be strong!' 'Know thyself!' 'Hitch your wagon to a star!' - how often these die away into dim whispers when we face these seething millions of black men? And yet do they not belong to them? Are they not their heritage as well as yours? "
W. E. B. Du Bois
America
Great
Men
" Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Most
Today
Slavery
" From the very first, it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what is slavery but the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of natural internal leadership? "
W. E. B. Du Bois
People
Leadership
Work
" My autobiography is a digressive illustration and exemplification of what race has meant in the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Illustration
World
Race
" I was born free. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Born
Free
I Was Born
" As a race, the Negroes are not lazy. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Race
Lazy
Negroes
" For most people, it is enough for the world to know that they aspire. The world does not ask what their aspirations are, trusting that those aspirations are for the best and greatest things. But with regard to the Negroes in America, there is a feeling that their aspirations in some way are not consistent with the great ideals. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Best
Great
America
" I had a happy childhood and acceptance in the community. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Childhood
Happy
Acceptance
" Was there ever a nation on God's fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was, and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Worth
God
Culture
" These are the things of which men think, who live: of their own selves and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and service; of rule and reason and women and children; of Beauty and Death and War. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Live
Children
War