Quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.

When in this world a man comes forward with a thought, a deed, a vision, we ask not how does he look, but what is his message?. . . The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty. . . .

I believe in pride of race and lineage and self - in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.

The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.

But what of black women?. . . I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this - with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need - this life is hell.

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.

Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others. . . . One feels his two-ness - 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.