Best quotes from The Souls of Black Folk

Then, as the storm burst round him, he rose slowly to his feet and turned his closed eyes toward the Sea. And the world whistled in his ears.

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.

One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.

Only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull understands, of the dark pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn.

We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.

Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society.

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

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

The hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing.

In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

The South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong; for education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know.

So far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the... effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambitions of our brighter minds ­ so far as he, the South, or the Nation does this ­ we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men

It is a hard thing to live haunted by the ghost of an untrue dream; to see the wide vision of empire fade into real ashes and dirt.

They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then instead of saying directly, How does it feel like to be a problem?, they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town, or...