So soon as a nation discovers that it holds in the heads and hearts of its individual citizens the vast mine of knowledge, out of which it may build a just government, then more and more it calls those citizens to select their rulers and to judge the justice of their acts.
Du Bois asserts that a nation's strength lies in its citizens' knowledge, which should guide governance.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness…
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.