284 Quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

The most important thing to remember is this: to be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.

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

A university is a human invention for the transmission of knowledge and culture from generation to generation, through the training of quick minds and pure hearts, and for this work no other human invention will suffice, not even trade and industrial schools.

The white economic and political elite often failed to recognize blacks as American, just as blacks often failed to recognize their potential for advancement outside of the limited opportunities afforded them by whites.

The price of culture is a Lie.

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.

The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging.

Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction.

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.