W. E. B. Du Bois

“A system of education is not one thing, nor does it have a single definite object, nor is it a mere matter of schools. Education is that whole system of human training within and without the...”

“Before and after emancipation, the Negro, in self-defense, was propelled toward the white employer. The endowments of wealthy white men have developed great institutions of learning for the...”

“Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.”

“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.”

“The ruling of men is the effort to direct the individual actions of many persons toward some end. This end theoretically should be the greatest good of all, but no human group has ever reach...”

“These are the things of which men think, who live: of their own selves and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and service; of rule and reason and women and chil...”

“From the very first, it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were s...”

“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 w...”

“North as well as South, the Negroes have emerged from slavery into a serfdom of poverty and restricted rights.”

“A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons and lowers.”

“To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.”

“Education is the development of power and ideal.”

“When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.”

“As a race, the Negroes are not lazy.”

“How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real!”

“Make yourself do unpleasant things so as to gain the upper hand of your soul.”

“Education and work are the levers to uplift a people.”