19 sourced quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois on equality & social justice, democracy & freedom, peace, non-violence & conflict, history & civilisation, ethics & morality, with a use case for each in GS4, Essay and interviews.
There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for.
— W. E. B. Du BoisThe Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (1897), ch. XII: The Essentials in the Struggle, parag
Use itGS4/Essay: why social evils persist; their existence reflects collective moral weakness.
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.
There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
— W. E. B. Du BoisThe Study of the Negro Problems, paragraph 51, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. XI (January 1898)
Use itLife/GS4: the real cowardice is refusing to know uncomfortable truths.
The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.
— W. E. B. Du BoisTo the Nations of the World, address to Pan-African conference, London (1900). These words are also found in The Souls of Black Folk (1903),
Use itGS1/Essay on racial discrimination; the defining problem of the 20th century.
To have given each one of the million Negro free families a forty-acre freehold would have made a basis of real democracy in the United States that might easily have transformed the modern world.
Human nature is not simple and any classification that roughly divides men into good and bad, superior and inferior, slave and free, is and must be ludicrously untrue and universally dangerous as a permanent exhaustive classification.
I believe in God who made of one blood all races that dwell on earth. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development.
I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.
— W. E. B. Du BoisThe Talented Tenth, published as the second chapter of The Negro Problem, a collection of articles by African Americans (New York: James Pot
Use itEssay on education's purpose; build character, not just skills.
The Negro slave trade was the first step in modern world commerce, followed by the modern theory of colonial expansion. Slaves as an article of commerce were shipped as long as the traffic paid.
The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans.