In November 2020, friends of the Due west. E. B. Du Bois Center shared a series of quotes by Du Bois that resonate in our own time.

The quotes below were chosen by the 2019 accomplice of Du Bois Center graduate and mail-doctoral fellows.

Du Bois Center Fellows Favorite Du Bois Quotes

Grouping portrait of Du Bois and friends and family at his 70th birthday celebration at Atlanta University, 1938.

"Betwixt me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; past others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, notwithstanding, flutter circular it. They approach me in a one-half-hesitant sort of manner, eye me curiously or compassionately, and and then, instead of proverb directly, How does it feel to be a trouble? they say, I know an fantabulous colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your claret boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may inquire. To the real question, How does it feel to exist a problem? I respond seldom a word."

W. E. B. Du Boisin The Souls of Black Folk(1903)
Called past Jay Cephas, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Northeastern University and 2019 Du Bois Center Mail-Doctoral Fellow

"You are non and yet you are: your thoughts, your deeds, above all your dreams still alive."

W. Due east. B. Du Bois in The Autobiography of Westward. E. B. Du Bois(1968)
Called by Freeden Blume Oeur, Associate Professor of Sociology and Education at Tufts Academy and 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Young man

"Nosotros say easily, for instance, 'The ignorant ought non to vote.' We would say, 'No civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government,' and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it."

Due west. Due east. B. Du Bois in Of the Ruling of Men (1920)
Chosen by Adam Dahl, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Mail service-Doctoral Fellow

"The slave went gratuitous; stood a brief moment in the sun; and so moved dorsum again toward slavery."

W. E. B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
Chosen by Alexandria Russell, Post-Doctoral Boyfriend in the Department of History at Rutgers University and 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Fellow
Portrait taken past author and lensman Carl Van Vechten.

"Children learn more than from what you are than what yous teach."

Westward. Due east. B. Du Bois
Called by Victoria I. Rizo Lenshyn, German and Scandinavian Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Fellow

"Reader of expressionless words who would live deeds, this is the flowering of my logic: I dream of a world of infinitive and valuable variety; non in the laws of gravity or atomic weights, but in human diversity in height and weight, color and skin, hair and olfactory organ and lip. But more especially and far above and across this, is a realm of true freedom: in thought and dream, fantasy and imagination; in souvenir, aptitude, and genius—all possible manner of departure, topped with freedom of soul to do and be, and freedom of thought to give to a world and build into it, all wealth of inborn individuality. Each effort to finish this freedom of being is a blow at democracy—that real democracy which is reservoir and opportunity . . . In that location can be no perfect democracy concise past color, race, or poverty. Simply with all we accomplish all, even Peace."

W. Due east. B. Du Bois in The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Role Which Africa Has Played in Globe History (Oxford University Printing, 2007 [1947]), 165.
Chosen by Phillip Sinitiere, Professor of History at the College of Biblical Studies, Houston, TX and 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Beau

"Perhaps even higher than strength and art loom man sympathy and cede as characteristic of Negro womanhood"

W. E. B. Du Bois in The Damnation of Women (1920)
Chosen past Sarah Holm Tanzi, 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Fellow

 Viewing anniversary parade from balcony of aboriginal Royal Palace in Peking, Oct. 1, 1962.

"Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and cute things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth most all this, and then far every bit the truth is ascertainable?"

W. Due east. B. Du Boisin Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
Chosen by Eliza Araújo, Visiting Scholar at UMass AFROAm Department, Ph.D student at Universidade Federal da Paraíba, and 2019 Du Bois Heart Graduate Fellow

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

W. E. B. Du Bois
Called by Venus Green, Doctoral student in Sociology at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Heart Graduate Young man

"Beneath the Veil lay right and wrong, vengeance and honey, and sometimes throwing aside the veil, a soul of sweet Dazzler and Truth stood revealed."

W. Due east. B. Du Bois in Blackness Reconstruction in America (1935)
Chosen past Aaron Yates, Doctoral pupil in Sociology at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Eye Graduate Fellow

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

W. E. B. Du Bois
Chosen by Samantha Davis, Doctoral student in Political Science at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Heart Graduate Fellow

Portrait of West. E. B. Du Bois seated in study belongings newspaper.

"The true significance of slavery in the United States to the whole social development of America lay in the ultimate relation of slaves to democracy. What were to exist the limits of democratic control in the United states of america? If all labor, black as well every bit white, became free – were given schools and the right to vote – what control could or should be set to the power and action of these laborers? Was the dominion of the mass of Americans to exist unlimited, and the right to rule extended to all men regardless of race and colour, or if not, what power of dictatorship and control; and how would property and privilege be protected? This was the great and principal question which was in the minds of the men who wrote the Constitution of the United States and connected in the minds of thinkers downwardly through the slavery controversy. Information technology even so remains with the globe as the trouble of democracy expands and touches all races and nations."

Westward. E. B. Du Boisin Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
Called by Mike Jirik, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at UMass and 2019 Du Bois Heart Graduate Fellow

Rule-post-obit, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than correct, justice and patently common-sense.

W. E. B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction (1935)

"And herein lies the tragedy of the age: non that men are poor, –all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, –who is skilful? not that men are ignorant, –what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men."

W. Due east. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk(1903)
Called by Stacie Klinowski, Doctoral student in the English language Department at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Fellow

"Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, non some more convenient flavor. Information technology is today that our best piece of work can be done and non some future day or future year."

W. E. B. Du Bois
Called by Heather Brinn, Ph.D Candidate in the History Department at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Fellow

Westward. E. B. Du Bois in his function holding the offset result of The Crisis.

"The return from your piece of work must exist the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven equally you can become."

W. E. B. Du Bois
Called by Khaleelah Harris, Master of Divinity educatee at Yale Divinity Schoolhouse and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Fellow

"Just ane thing is certain and that is the fact that since the fifteenth century these ancestors of mine and their other descendants have had a mutual history; have suffered a common disaster and have i long retentiveness. The actual ties of heritage between the individuals of this grouping, vary with the ancestors that they have in common and many others: Europeans and Semites, peradventure Mongolians, certainly American Indians. Simply the physical bond is least and the bluecoat of colour relatively unimportant relieve equally a bluecoat; the real essence of this kinship is its social heritage of slavery; the discrimination and insult; and this heritage binds together non simply the children of Africa, but extends through xanthous Asia and into the South Seas. It is this unity that draws me to Africa."

West. E. B. Du Bois in Sunset of Dawn(1940)
Chosen past Swati Birla, Historical Sociologist at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Fellow

"Crucified on the vast bicycle of time, I flew round and round with the Zeitgeist, waving my pen and lifting faint voices to explain, expound and exhort; to see, foresee and prophesy, to the few who could or would listen."

Due west. E. B. Du Bois
Chosen past Jingjing Zhang, Visiting Scholar in W.E.B Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Boyfriend