"There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know."
— W.E.B. DuBois

"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."
— W.E.B. DuBois

"Children learn more from what you are than what you teach."
— W.E.B. DuBois

"The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression."
— W.E.B. DuBois

"The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American..."
— W.E.B. DuBois (Souls of Black Folk & Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933-1945 & Movements of the New Left 1950-1975)

"The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, 'What else are women for?'"
— W.E.B. DuBois (W.E.B. Dubois Reader)

"I believe that all men, black, brown, and white, are brothers."
— W.E.B. DuBois

"One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strenth alone keeps it from being torn asunder."
— W.E.B. DuBois (The Souls of Black Folk)

"After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever 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."
— W.E.B. DuBois