"Poems by W. E. B. Du Bois at PoetryFoundation.org"

“I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.”

“Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.”

“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.”

“Human nature is not simple and any classification that roughly divides men into good and bad, superior and inferior, slave and free, is and must be ludicrously untrue and universally dangerous as a permanent exhaustive classification.”

“I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty for Beauty to set the world right.”

“The most ordinary Negro is a distinct gentleman, but it takes extraordinary training and opportunity to make the average white man anything but a hog.”