W.E.B. DuBois

William Edward Burghardt DuBois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an African American civil rights activist, sociologist, historian, writer, editor, poet, freemason, and scholar. Although born in the United States, he became a naturalized citizen of Ghana in 1963.

Quotes

• "I sit with Shakespeare, and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out of the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed Earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil."
• "The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame."
• "In my own country for nearly a century I have been nothing but a nigger." - to an audience in Beijing in 1959.
• "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line."
• "I believe that there are human stocks with whom it is physically unwise to intermarry, but to think that these stocks are all colored or that there are no such white stocks is unscientific and false." http://www.wfu.edu/~caron/ssrs/Dorr.rtf
• "The cause of war is preparation for war". http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15210/15210-h/15210-h.htm