For education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.

If you want to feel humor too exquisite and subtle for translation, sit invisibly among a gang of Negro workers.

The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.

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.

We black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.

Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other.

Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.