The Souls Of Black Folk Quotes
"The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line."
"I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive."
"Education and work are the levers to uplift a people."
"Work, culture, liberty,—all these we need, not singly but together."
"The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defense,—else what shall save us from a second slavery?"
"To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships."
"He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa."
"The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood."
"The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression."
"I loved my school, and the fine faith the children had in the wisdom of their teacher was truly marvellous."
"The sight of the Veil that hung between us and Opportunity... caused us to think some thoughts together."
"How many heartfuls of sorrow shall balance a bushel of wheat?"
"The guiding of thought and the deft coordination of deed is at once the path of honor and humanity."
"What if the Negro people be wooed from a strife for righteousness, to regard dollars as the be-all and end-all of life?"
"I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not."
"Let a white man touch me, and he dies; I don’t boast this... but I mean it."
"Careless ignorance and laziness here, fierce hate and vindictiveness there;—these are the extremes of the Negro problem."
"A revolution such as that of '63 is a terrible thing; they that rose rich in the morning often slept in paupers' beds."
"A long low house faced us, with porch and flying pillars, great oaken door, and a broad lawn shining in the evening sun."
"White people are more in evidence here, and farmer and hired labor replace to some extent the absentee landlord and rack-rented tenant."
"The Negro church of to-day is the social centre of Negro life in the United States, and the most characteristic expression of African character."
"Draw lines of crime, of incompetency, of vice, as tightly and uncompromisingly as you will, for these things must be proscribed; but a color-line not only does not accomplish this purpose, but thwarts it."
"Such churches are really governments of men."
"There is an organized Negro church for every sixty black families in the nation."
"No such institution as the Negro church could rear itself without definite historical foundations."
"His religion was nature-worship, with profound belief in invisible surrounding influences, good and bad."
"The old ties of blood relationship and kinship disappeared, and instead of the family appeared a new polygamy and polyandry."
"He early appeared on the plantation and found his function as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown."
"The Baptist Church is still largest in membership among Negroes, and has a million and a half communicants."
"The Negro church antedates the Negro home, leads to an explanation of much that is paradoxical in this communistic institution."
"The Negro has already been pointed out many times as a religious animal."
"The slave masters early realized this, and cheerfully aided religious propaganda within certain bounds."
"The black bards caught new notes, and sometimes even dared to sing."
"To-day the two groups of Negroes, the one in the North, the other in the South, represent these divergent ethical tendencies."
"A perfect life was his, all joy and love, with tears to make it brighter."
"The death of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defence."
"But there is a patent defence at hand,—the defence of deception and flattery."
"The soul, long pent up and dwarfed, suddenly expands in new-found freedom."