A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.
Interpretation
Taking action and working hard is more valuable than simply complaining about injustices.
W. E. B. Du Bois emphasizes the importance of proactive effort and hard work over mere complaints and demands for rights. He suggests that instead of focusing on grievances, individuals should engage in diligent labor and strive earnestly towards their goals, as this dedication will lead to greater recognition and progress than legislative measures alone.
In practice
In a motivational speech about achieving personal goals.
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.
People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided.
I am somebody. I am me. And I don't need anybody to make me somebody.
Disappointment can drive us, or it can defeat us.
Failure is delay, but not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead-end street.
Confronting and overcoming challenges is an exhilarating experience. It does something to feed the soul and the mind. It makes you more than you were before. It strengthens the mental muscles and enables you to become better prepared for the next challenge.
I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.
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