It took but a spark to put this instinctive feeling into words, and words led to deeds.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “It took but a spark to put this instinctive feeling into words, and words led to deeds.”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois notes how a strong emotional response can lead to action.
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Thus we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy.
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Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.