“Human nature is not simple and any classification that roughly divides men into good and bad, superior and inferior, slave and free, is and must be ludicrously untrue and universally dangerous as a permanent exhaustive classification.”

—  W.E.B. Du Bois

Source: The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003), p. 10

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Human nature is not simple and any classification that roughly divides men into good and bad, superior and inferior, sl…" by W.E.B. Du Bois?
W.E.B. Du Bois photo
W.E.B. Du Bois62
American sociologist, historian, activist and writer 1868–1963

Related quotes

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is.”

Jorge Luis Borges book The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

As translated by Will Fitzgerald
Other Inquisitions (1952), The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

Bion of Borysthenes photo

“Good slaves are free, but bad free men are slaves of many passions.”

Bion of Borysthenes (-325–-246 BC) ancient greek philosopher

As quoted by Stobaeus, iii.1.18

“The basic rules of classification are
- Each characteristic of division must produce at least two classes
- Only one principle of division must be used at a time, to produce mutually exclusive classes.
- The species of any genius must be completely exhaustive of their parent class.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 2.

“[The Classification Research Group was] a typical British affair, with no resources beyond the native wit of its members, no allegiance to any existing system of classification, no fixed target, no recognition by the British Government (naturally), and at first only an amused tolerance from the library profession.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Source: The Classification Research Group 1952—1962 (1962), p. 127; As cited in Shawne D Miksa (2002) Pigeonholes and punchcards : identifying the division between library classification research and information retrieval research, 1952-1970. http://courses.unt.edu/smiksa/documents/Miksa_Dissertation_2002.pdf

“In science there are uses many classifications of entities - plants, animals, rocks, soils, stars, diseases, occupations, and so on. In these taxonomies a classification must display genetic relations - for example, an evolutionary family tree of animal species - but its prime purpose is to aid in the identification of entities… Classification enables us to select, from the whole universe of known entities, the one that best matches one newly encountered.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 3.

“I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Ever Since Darwin

"Why We Should Not Name Human Races—A Biological View", p. 231
Ever Since Darwin (1977)

“After a great deal of (quite valuable) discussion, the British Classification Research Group accepted that ‘facet analysis’ must be the basis of a classification scheme able to meet the modern requirements.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Attributed to Foskett in: T. Tyaganatarajan (1961) "A study in the developments of colon classification." American Documentation. Vol 12 (4), p. 270

H. G. Wells photo

“For crude classifications and false generalisations are the curse of all organised human life.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 1

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“God is not interested merely in freeing black men and brown men and yellow men, but God is interested in freeing the whole human race. We must work with determination to create a society, not where black men are superior and other men are inferior and vice versa, but a society in which all men will live together as brothers and respect the dignity and worth of human personality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Give Us the Ballot (1957)
Context: We must not seek to use our emerging freedom and our growing power to do the same thing to the white minority that has been done to us for so many centuries. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man. We must not become victimized with a philosophy of black supremacy. God is not interested merely in freeing black men and brown men and yellow men, but God is interested in freeing the whole human race. We must work with determination to create a society, not where black men are superior and other men are inferior and vice versa, but a society in which all men will live together as brothers and respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

Nicholas Wade photo

“The classification of humans into five continental based races is perfectly reasonable and is supported by genome clustering studies. In addition, classification into the three major races of African, East Asian and European is supported by the physical anthropology of human skull types and dentition.”

Nicholas Wade (1942) British writer

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014)

Related topics