W.E.B. Du Bois: “In matters of Truth and Faith and Beauty, the Ancient Law was inexcusably strait and modern law unforgivably stupid.”

One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

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

I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.