The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Black experience2 quotes
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others... One feels his twoness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivngs; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903American music1 quote
The Negro folk-song-the rhythmic cry of the slave-stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903Anti-colonialism1 quote
The dark world is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1920Anti-imperialism1 quote
The dark world is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1920Black music1 quote
The Negro folk-song-the rhythmic cry of the slave-stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903Freedom1 quote
The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression, even though that cost be blood. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1909Oppression1 quote
The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression, even though that cost be blood. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1909Political theory1 quote
The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression, even though that cost be blood. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1909Race1 quote
The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing-a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. THe Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiousity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful! — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1920Race relations1 quote
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1900Whiteness1 quote
The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing-a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. THe Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiousity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful! — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1920Work1 quote
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. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1958