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The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.

— W. E. B. Du Bois The Negro (1915)

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Democracy

More quotes by W. E. B. Du Bois

Believe in life! Always human beings will progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

John Brown: A Biography (1909)

I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty for Beauty to set the world right.

The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003)

The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people.

The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003)

Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.

Niagara Movement Speech (1905)

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Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution (1917)

The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally.

Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

Gustave Flaubert

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: W. E. B. Du Bois (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.