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.
Source: The Souls of Black Folk, ch. 1, 1903.
-- W E B Du Bois, (Feb 23 1868-1963), US writer, social reformer; He was prominent in the early movement for racial equality and helped create the NAACP, 1909.