W. E. B. Du Bois
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"William Edward Burghardt" ""W. E. B."" "Du Bois" was an American Sociology/sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanism/Pan-Africanist, author and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After graduating from 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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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.

191

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

189

But what of black women? . . . I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.

188

Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life.

174

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

170

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line -- the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.

148

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

140

A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.

139

A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.

131

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.

130

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

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