W.E.B. Du Bois

"The greatest gift we can give the next generation is a better world."

"Education is the pathway to freedom and self-determination."

"Racial pride is compatible with human brotherhood."

"The Negro's survival has depended on resilience and adaptability."

"We must work not just for ourselves, but for those who come after us."

"The most powerful force for change is an educated conscience."

"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line."

"Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is the most fundamental."

"Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season."

"The minds of black folk have not been wrecked and pilfered by their oppressors without resistance."

"I believe it is the duty of the Negro, as the greatest minority in this nation, to fight against injustice."

"Either we as a race must rise up or we must fall utterly away."

"The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men."

"Education must not simply teach work—it must teach Life."

"Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller lives."

"The true college will always be filled with new creative thought."

"I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not."

"We cannot live only for ourselves."

"A man by himself is in bad company."

"The cost of living does not include the cost of life."

"When you have finished reading every history book written, you still will not have truly learned history."

"The world was thinking wrong about race, and I had to help set it straight."

"Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor,—all men know something of poverty."

"Work culture and higher learning are no longer luxuries for the few."

"Freedom is not given, it is taken."

"I wanted to see the Africans in Africa, and I wanted to know what the new independent nations were trying to do."

"The Negro youth must be made to feel that their race has a glorious past and a glorious future."

"Science is the handmaiden of progress."

"Art is the attempt to make human beauty and truth eternal."

"Music is the sweetest thing in life itself."