# Quote — W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk

> 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, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. 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. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.

- Author: [W.E.B. Dubois](https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois.md)
- Book: [The Souls of Black Folk](https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois#The_Souls_of_Black_Folk_(1903)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk/after-the-egyptian

## More from this book

> Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk/herein-lies-the.md)

> The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk/the-function-of-the.md)

> Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live, — a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head — ah, bitterly! — the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand — ah, wearily! — to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty is a lie.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk/within-the-veil.md)