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The Souls of Black Folk Quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois: Context & Meanings

4 quotations linked to The Souls of Black Folk by or associated with W. E. B. Du Bois, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

More by W. E. B. Du Bois
About this source

1903 essays and sociological-literary study

Topics and ideas

The color line, double-consciousness, identity, education, freedom, history, racial injustice, spiritual striving and Black life after emancipation.

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Leading themes in this source

Prominent ideas connected with the quotations represented here

Identity 3Understanding 3Education Quotes About Teaching & Intellectual Formation 2Freedom 2Self-Worth 2Short 2Culture 2History 2Be Yourself 1Deep 1Equality 1Growth 1Growth Mindset 1Humanity 1
Represented passages

4 quotations with source context and meaning

Source identified1
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.
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“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.”

W. E. B. Du Bois
Meaning & context

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 details

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.

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Source identified2
The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.
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“The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.”

W. E. B. Du Bois
Meaning & context

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

Source details

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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Source identified3
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.
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“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.”

W. E. B. Du Bois
Meaning & context

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 details

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.

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Source identified4
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.
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“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.”

W. E. B. Du Bois
Meaning & context

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 details

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.

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More represented works

Continue through other sources by W. E. B. Du Bois

Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil1920 · 3 quotationsThe Conservation of Races1897 · 3 quotations