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W. E. B. Du Bois Biography

W. E. B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois (/duːˈbɔɪs/ doo-BOYSS; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

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W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.

America, Opportunity, Son, Sons

Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down. . . Education must not simply teach work - it must teach life.

Like, Pull, Teacher, Teaching, Work, You Like It

We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.

Oppression, Oppressor, Soul, Souls, Tyranny, White

Perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of current America is the attempt to reduce life to buying and selling. Life is not love unless love is sex and bought and sold. Life is not knowledge save knowledge of technique, of science for destruction. Life is not beauty except beauty for sale. Life is not art unless its price is high and it is sold for profit. All life is production for profit, and for what is profit but for buying and selling again?

Art, Beauty, Except, Love Is, Sale, Sex

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

America, Civil Rights, Negro, People

It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.

Boys, Girl, Greek, Long, Real, Thought

We cannot hope, then, in this generation, or for several generations, that the mass of the whites can be brought to assume that close sympathetic and self-sacrificing leadership of the blacks which their present situation so eloquently demands. Such leadership, such social teaching and example, must come from the blacks themselves.

Mass, Sacrifice, Self, Situation, Teaching, Whites

I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war.

30Th, Labor, School, Sunday, War

There may often be excuse for doing things poorly in this world, but there is never any excuse for calling a poorly done thing, well done.

Calling, Done, Excuse, Often Is, Poorly, Thing

There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.

Color, Perfect, Poverty, Race

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.

Black History, Dark, Souls, Strength, Two

The music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.

Children, Disappointment, Misty, Music, People

The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

Fall, Falling, Like, Past, Shadowy, Stars

To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.

Fire, Mind, Play, Untrained, Wildly

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.

Men, Progress, Pull, Push, Social Justice, Surging

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

Cost, Inspirational, Inspiring, Memorial Day, Price, Repression

And yet not a dream, but a mighty reality- a glimpse of the higher life, the broader possibilities of humanity, which is granted to the man who, amid the rush and roar of living, pauses four short years to learn what living means

Dream, Mean, Mighty, Possibilities, Reality, Roar

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.

Believe, Greater, Life, Long, Lose, Progress

How hard a thing is life to the lowly and yet how human and real is it? And all this life and love and strife and failure, - is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day? The answer lies in each of us. For somewhere in your past. . . somewhere some 100 years ago?there rose from the smoldering ashes of slavery?a proud and humble family who suffered and struggled with life. A family who found the strength to endure all the indignities of life in America, and that family had the hope for a taste of her bounties in the future.

Hope, Life And Love, Love, Lying, Real, Struggled

But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell:the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.

Dream, Dreams, Ears, Right, Soul, Souls

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