The quotations of

W. E. B. Du Bois

American sociologist and activist

1868–1963

11 quotes, most often on Race and Knowledge.

I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty and for Beauty to set the world right.
“Criteria of Negro Art”, The Crisis (October 1926)
- Beauty
- Truth & Lies
The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
John Brown: A Biography (1909): “The Legacy of John Brown”
- Liberty
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.
Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 602
- Democracy
- Race
There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
The Study of the Negro Problems, paragraph 51, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. XI (January 1898)
- Courage
- Knowledge
Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.
Last message to the world (written 1957); read at his funeral (1963)
- Hope
- Life & Death
Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
Niagara Movement, “Address to the Country”, Harpers Ferry (19 August 1906)
- America
- Education
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 Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XII: Of Alexander CrummellIn context
- Knowledge
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.
The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. VI: “Of the Training of Black Men”In context
- Race
- Reading
The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.
The Souls of Black Folk (1903), The ForethoughtIn context
- History
- Race
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Chapter IIn context
- Money
- Race
The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.
The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Chapter VIn context
- Fame
- Work

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