W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

This is a fallen world. People lie, the truth gets distorted, and that's the way it is. What's for dinner ?

If a young person has any idealism at all, it's strongest about the time he finishes college.

I was very excited about the idea that I could be an idealist, that I could be my age, the eager beaver who had hope in the justice system and the one who gets disappointed just like the audience.

A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

A miserable politics awaits us when the irreligious rot flows downstream.

I grew up with the idealistic notion that writing and literature were noble causes. I had no inkling, no sense of what I would eventually encounter in terms of people who weren't being sincere. I'm not saying that it happens always or a lot, but it happens enough that sometimes it makes me feel a little queasy.

There is no more subtle dissolvent of morals than sentimentality.

All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

A sturdy, hardened sinner shall advance to the utmost pitch of impiety, with less reluctance than he took the first step while his conscience was yet vigilant and tender.

Two evils, greed and faction are the destruction of all justice.

Heroes? Don't believe in them.

The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.

O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

A depraved culture supports a depraved politics and vice versa.

The days of idealism had gone. Only life was left.

In proportion as a man is selfish, so far has he receded from the motive which constitutes virtue.

I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending

In youth, it is common to measure right and wrong by the opinion of the world, and in age, to act without any measure but interest, and to lose shame without substituting virtue.

We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without the means to measure our descent.

All men are selfish, brutal and inconsiderate--and I wish I could find one.

He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.

Corrupt citizens breed corrupt rulers, and it is the mob who finally decides when virtue shall die.

Cynicism is a sure sign of youth.

Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West, results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.