American - Writer | February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963
I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love.
W. E. B. Du Bois
LoveBeautyFreedomSunshineRide
Education must not simply teach work - it must teach Life.
LifeWorkEducationTeachMust
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
ManHardshipsPoorRaceLandHard
School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. 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.
LifeMenSoulSchoolBlackThought
No universal selfishness can bring social good to all. Communism - the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute - this is the only way of human life.
LifeGoodBestMenEffortCommunism
Education is the development of power and ideal.
EducationPowerDevelopmentIdeal
Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women's suffrage.
WomenArgumentSuffrageEvery
What a world this will be when human possibilities are freed, when we discover each other, when the stranger is no longer the potential criminal and the certain inferior!
WorldPotentialPossibilitiesWill
A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons and lowers.
PeopleTrueWorthyFalseIdeal
I believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell. 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 the possibility of infinite development.
GodOpportunityTimeMenSoulGift
From the very first, it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what is slavery but the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of natural internal leadership?
WorkLeadershipPeopleObstacles
Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.'
DailyOpportunityWarOpinionPlace
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