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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
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" To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Mighty
Play
Weak
" 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
" In the Constitution of the United States, Negroes are referred to as fellows although the word 'slave' is carefully avoided before the thirteenth amendment. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Before
Slave
Constitution
" 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
" A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons and lowers. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
People
True
False
" I believe in the Prince of Peace. I believe that War is Murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong, and I believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Strength
Believe
Peace
" 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
" Reconstruction was a vast labor movement of ignorant, muddled, and bewildered white men who had been disinherited of land and labor and fought a long battle with sheer subsistence, hanging on the edge of poverty, eating clay and chasing slaves and now lurching up to manhood. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Men
Long
Battle
" Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Live
Progress
Always
" 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
" The use of slave women as day workers naturally broke up or made impossible the normal Negro home, and this and the slave code led to a development of which the South was really ashamed and which it often denied, and yet perfectly evident: the raising of slaves in the Border slave states for systematic sale on the commercialized cotton plantations. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Impossible
Cotton
Day
" 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
" How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real! "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Human
How
Hard
" I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Freedom
Vote
Sunshine
" Before and after emancipation, the Negro, in self-defense, was propelled toward the white employer. The endowments of wealthy white men have developed great institutions of learning for the Negro, but the freedom of action on the part of these same universities has been curtailed in proportion as they are indebted to white philanthropies. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Freedom
Action
Men
" Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.' "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Daily
War
Place
" Negroes could be sold - actually sold as we sell cattle, with no reference to calves or bulls or recognition of family. It was a nasty business. The white South was properly ashamed of it and continually belittled and almost denied it. But it was a stark and bitter fact. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Family
Business
Recognition
" The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Price
Liberty
Less
" 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
" Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Good
Discipline
Serious
" Education must not simply teach work - it must teach Life. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Must
Teach
Work
" 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
" My great-grandfather fought with the Colonial Army in New England in the American Revolution. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Army
Revolution
England
" When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
More
Numbers
Reading
" A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Classic
Again
Book
" 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
" Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than right, justice and plain common-sense. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Political
Justice
Consistency
" I had a happy childhood and acceptance in the community. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Childhood
Happy
Acceptance
" If there is anybody in this land who thoroughly believes that the meek shall inherit the earth they have not often let their presence be known. "
W. E. B. Du Bois
Earth
Known
Land
" 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