Political Quotes

W.E.B. Du Bois: The choice is not always between the least and the greatest, the high and the empty, but only too often it is between…

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The choice is not always between the least and the greatest, the high and the empty, but only too often it is between starvation and something.
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W.E.B. Du Bois

Editor's note · Context

Du Bois points out that often the choices people face are not idealistic but rather about survival.

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Jan 1, 1903

This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of…

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He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

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The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the…

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Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a…

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