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“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.
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“Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.”
Celebrated independence can sharpen awareness of exclusion when rights proclaimed as national or universal are not shared by the people whose unfreedom makes the contrast visible.
Source note: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, July 5, 1852. The sentence precedes Douglass’s statement that the blessings of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence are not enjoyed in common under slavery.
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“Society in equality is its normal state.”
Mill contrasts relations organized around command and obedience with equal association, presenting equality as the normal direction of an improving society.
Source note: The Subjection of Women, discussion of marriage and moral cultivation; the sentence follows Mill’s contrast between older command-and-obedience relations and society among equals.
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“I contend for the rights of men and the liberty of reason.”
The line joins political rights with intellectual liberty: the argument is not merely for a different ruler but for people’s capacity to reason without inherited deference.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Men, opening letter to Edmund Burke; Wollstonecraft frames the pamphlet as a defense of human rights and the liberty of reason.
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“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The closing line ties democratic government to public responsibility rather than rulers standing apart from citizens.
Source note: Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863.
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“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.”