W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes About Social Justice

• I believe in pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2012). “Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil”, p.1, Courier Corporation

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• 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.

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2010). “Darkwater: The Givens Collection”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

  455

• This the American black man knows: his fight here is a fight to the finish. Either he dies or wins. If he wins it will be by no subterfuge or evasion of amalgamation . He will enter modern civilization here in America as a black man on terms of perfect and unlimited equality with any white man, or he will enter not at all. Either extermination root and branch, or absolute equality. There can be no compromise. This is the last great battle of the west.

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  "Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880".

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• The favorite device of the devil, ancient and modern, is to force a human being into a more or less artificial class, accuse the class of unnamed and unnameable sin, and then damn any individual in the alleged class, however innocent he may be.

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Justice   Diversity  

  1303

• Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground.

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois”, p.74, Oxford University Press

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• 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?

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Justice   Diversity   Political  

  W.E.B. Du Bois, Bob Blaisdell (2013). “W. E. B. Du Bois: Selections from His Writings”, p.66, Courier Corporation

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• The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  The Souls of Black Folk ch. 2 (1903)

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• The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  John Brown ch. 13 (1909)

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• Herein lies the tragedy of the age: Not that men are poor, - all men know something of poverty. Not that men are wicked, - who is good? Not that men are ignorant, - what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  The Souls of Black Folk ch. 12 (1903)

  455

• One ever feels his twoness - 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.

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  "Strivings of the Negro People" (1897)

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• To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

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  W. E. B. Du Bois

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early Essays”, p.67, Oxford University Press

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