Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than right, justice and plain common-sense.
Interpretation
Prioritize moral values and common sense over strict adherence to laws and political norms.
W. E. B. Du Bois emphasizes the importance of prioritizing ethical principles of justice, fairness, and common sense over rigidly following laws, legal precedents, or political consistency. He suggests that when laws or political practices conflict with moral righteousness, it is important to advocate for justice based on fairness and human commonality rather than purely legalistic or political frameworks.
In practice
During a discussion on civil disobedience, one can reference this quote to illustrate the moral imperative to challenge unjust laws.
Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.'
Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it - this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.
School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
For most people, it is enough for the world to know that they aspire. The world does not ask what their aspirations are, trusting that those aspirations are for the best and greatest things. But with regard to the Negroes in America, there is a feeling that their aspirations in some way are not consistent with the great ideals.
For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.
Discrimination in virtually every aspect of political, economic, and social life is now perfectly legal if you've been labeled a felon.
The people who have been unjustly disenfranchised by our criminal justice system and the people who daily fight for them always have, and always will be, the inspiration and focus of my efforts.
Industrialised countries must take the responsibility of helping poorer countries in the climate change action plan.
If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated.
We must put an end to the corruption and systemic racism in our justice system, and that starts by electing progressive district attorneys who will fight for real justice across the country.
The success of any legal system is measured by its fidelity to the universal ideal of justice.
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