“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.”
Source: The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003), p. 10
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W.E.B. Du Bois 62
American sociologist, historian, activist and writer 1868–1963Related quotes

“Good slaves are free, but bad free men are slaves of many passions.”
As quoted by Stobaeus, iii.1.18
Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 2.
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
Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 3.
"Why We Should Not Name Human Races—A Biological View", p. 231
Ever Since Darwin (1977)
Attributed to Foskett in: T. Tyaganatarajan (1961) "A study in the developments of colon classification." American Documentation. Vol 12 (4), p. 270

“For crude classifications and false generalisations are the curse of all organised human life.”
Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 1

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.