Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other. W. E. B. Du Bois More Quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois More Quotes From W. E. B. Du Bois 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 eye soul self One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long. W. E. B. Du Bois life long believe ...in any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand. W. E. B. Du Bois land blue country What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa? W. E. B. Du Bois gunpowder steel war Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery. W. E. B. Du Bois slavery doe men Cannot the nation that has absorbed ten million foreigners into its political life without catastrophe absorb ten million Negro Americans into that same political life at less cost than their unjust and illegal exclusion will involve? W. E. B. Du Bois diversity political justice The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, 'What else are women for? W. E. B. Du Bois stills want world If the unemployed could eat plans and promises, they would be able to spend the winter on the Riviera. W. E. B. Du Bois would-be winter promise I believe in pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves. W. E. B. Du Bois pride race believe Unless modern civilization is a failure, it is entirely feasible and practicable for two races in such essential political, economic and religious harmony as the white and colored people in America, to develop side by side in peace and mutual happiness, the peculiar contribution which each has to make to the culture of their common country. W. E. B. Du Bois religious inspiring country The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, - this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American. W. E. B. Du Bois african-american self men One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment. Instead roars the crash of hell. W. E. B. Du Bois hate simple dream Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, he belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambitions of our brighter minds. The way for people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away. W. E. B. Du Bois ambition rights people Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above. W. E. B. Du Bois wall night son It is the stars, it is the ancient stars, it is the young and everlasting stars! W. E. B. Du Bois ancient stars young Whiteness is ownership of the earth. W. E. B. Du Bois whiteness ownership earth The true college will ever have but one goal - not to earn meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes. W. E. B. Du Bois meat goal college All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their bellies, and no God greater than Gold. W. E. B. Du Bois training college men Race prejudice decreases values, both real estate and human. W. E. B. Du Bois prejudice real race I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls. W. E. B. Du Bois space men believe
