284 Quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

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.

Most men in this world are colored. A belief in humanity means a belief in colored men. The future will, in all reasonable possibility, be what colored men make of it.

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

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.

It is as though nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force.

Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.

The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people.

Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.

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