W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes

“Of all worlds, may the good Lord deliver us from a world where everybody looks like his neighbor and thinks like his neighbor and is like his neighbor.”

Du Bois rejects enforced sameness, defending the value of people and groups retaining genuine difference rather than conforming to a majority ideal.

Source note: Darkwater, essay “Of Beauty and Death.” The preceding sentence says that simply wanting to be oneself can be inconceivable to “the average worshiper of the majority”; the line is about individuality amid racialized conformity pressures.

“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.”

Liberty is described in civic, bodily and spiritual terms, joining political rights with the ordinary freedom to live without racial restriction.

Source note: Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, “Credo,” originally published in 1920. Project Gutenberg #15210. The sentence continues with freedom of association, movement, thought, dream and work “uncursed by color.”

“I believe in Pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves; in pride of lineage so great as to despise no man's father; in pride of race so chivalrous as neither to offer bastardy to the weak nor beg wedlock of the strong, knowing that men may be brothers in Christ, even though they be not brothers-in-law.”

Du Bois connects self-respect with respect for other people, making dignity incompatible with accepting injustice toward either oneself or another group.

Source note: Darkwater, “Credo.” The passage uses Du Bois’s period language of race and lineage within a broader declaration of human brotherhood, service, justice and liberty.

“The ideal of human brotherhood has become a practical possibility.”

Human solidarity is treated not merely as abstract sentiment but as an achievable political and social aim requiring organized effort and mutual recognition.

Source note: The Conservation of Races, closing programmatic resolutions. The sentence belongs to Du Bois’s 1897 argument about race organization and human brotherhood; period racial concepts remain historical context rather than modern science.

“The Academy should be impartial in conduct; while it aims to exalt the people it should aim to do so by truth—not by lies, by honesty—not by flattery.”

Du Bois argues that collective advancement requires truthful self-assessment rather than flattering narratives, making honesty part of responsible institutional leadership.

Source note: The Conservation of Races, discussion of the American Negro Academy’s conduct; Project Gutenberg #5685. The line is a direct institutional principle within Du Bois’s 1897 address, while the essay’s period racial classifications remain historically contextualized.

“We believe that the second great step toward a better adjustment of the relations between races, should be a more impartial selection of ability in the economic and intellectual world, and a greater respect for personal liberty and worth, regardless of race.”

Du Bois connects fair recognition of ability with personal liberty and worth, arguing that racial identity should not erase an individual’s claim to equitable consideration.

Source note: The Conservation of Races, Academy Creed, point 6; Project Gutenberg #5685. This is Du Bois’s own programmatic statement. The essay’s broader nineteenth-century racial theory remains historical context and is not presented as current biological science.

“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.”

Du Bois refuses the premise that racial exclusion determines intellectual belonging: in the world of culture and thought he claims equal access to Shakespeare and other major writers without asking permission from the color line.

Source note: The Souls of Black Folk, “Of the Training of Black Men,” Project Gutenberg #408. The sentence opens a longer passage in which Du Bois moves “across the color line” among Shakespeare, Balzac, Dumas, Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius; the context is Black cultural and intellectual dignity under segregation.

“The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.”

Du Bois identifies racial division and unequal relations between darker and lighter peoples as a defining political and social problem of his century.

Source note: The Souls of Black Folk, Forethought and repeated later in the book. The phrase is a historical diagnosis of racism, segregation and the aftermath of slavery, not a generic statement about interpersonal difference.

“One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

Du Bois names the strain of double-consciousness: a self forced to negotiate both its own identity and the degrading external gaze of a racist society.

Source note: The Souls of Black Folk, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” Project Gutenberg #408. The sentence follows Du Bois’s definition of double-consciousness and belongs to his analysis of Black American life under the color line.

“The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.”

Higher education has purposes beyond immediate earning because Du Bois sees it as connecting growing knowledge with the larger demands and meaning of real life.

Source note: The Souls of Black Folk, “Of the Training of Black Men.” This is the opening clause of a longer sentence in which Du Bois describes the university as an organ connecting real life with growing knowledge of life.