I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men. W. E. B. Du Bois More Quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois More Quotes From W. E. B. Du Bois At best, the natural good-nature is edged with complaint or has changed into sullenness and gloom. And now and then it blazes forth in veiled but hot anger. W. E. B. Du Bois now-and-then natural hot No people can more exactly interpret the inmost meaning of the present situation in Ireland than the American Negro. The scheme is simple. You knock a man down and then have him arrested for assault. You kill a man and then hang the corpse. W. E. B. Du Bois simple men people [We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds. W. E. B. Du Bois church energy men Liberty trains for liberty. W. E. B. Du Bois liberty train I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. W. E. B. Du Bois wince I believe that there are human stocks with whom it is physically unwise to intermarry, but to think that these stocks are all colored or that there are no such white stocks is unscientific and false. W. E. B. Du Bois white believe thinking Thus all Art is propaganda and ever must be. W. E. B. Du Bois art-is propaganda art A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons and lowers. W. E. B. Du Bois false true worthy people 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 education men school Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women's suffrage. W. E. B. Du Bois every suffrage argument women 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 people world 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 slavery leadership work people Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. W. E. B. Du Bois uplift education work people I am a Bolshevik. W. E. B. Du Bois bolshevik am i-am Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself. W. E. B. Du Bois yourself good discipline serious 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 poverty eating men long No universal selfishness can bring social good to all. Communism - the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute - this is the only way of human life. W. E. B. Du Bois best good men life 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 soul god time men Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than right, justice and plain common-sense. W. E. B. Du Bois legal consistency political justice 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 be-strong face black men
