I think that if a person doesn't feel cynical then they're out of phase with the 20th century. Being cynical is the only way to deal with modern civilization - you can't just swallow it whole. — Frank Zappa
The opposite of creativity is cynicism — Esa Saarinen
Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision — Rick Bayan
A sceptic finds Dallas absurd. A cynic thinks the public doesn't — Clive James
Cynicism is easy. Mimicry is easy. Optimistic contrarians are the rarest breed. — Naval Ravikant
Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack. — George S. Patton
The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. — Oscar Wilde
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. — Oscar Wilde
The cynic is his own worst enemy. It requires far less skill to run a wrecking company than it does to be an architect. — Uell Stanley Andersen
I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all. — Ralph B. Perry
I'm not an idealist anymore, I'm a bitter realist. — Soe Hok Gie
I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Short Being Cynical Quotes
Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. — George Carlin
I am skeptical in principle, gullible in practice. — Mason Cooley
Great intellects are skeptical. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Pessimism is self-fulfilling. — Naval Ravikant
People say you become more cynical as you get older. That hasn't been my experience. — Tucker Carlson
Pessimism is an easy trap to fall into, but it implies that humans are not creative. — Naval Ravikant
I'm a pessimist. But I'm a pessimist with a sense of responsibility. — Maynard James Keenan
A pessimist is just an optimist with experience. — Eyedea
Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil. — Vachel Lindsay
A skeptic is a person who, when he sees the handwriting on the wall, claims it is a forgery. — Morris Bender
Top 10 Being Cynical Quotes
An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation. — Bertrand Russell
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. — H. L. Mencken
A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it. — Harry S. Truman
I believe that history is not made by cynics. It is made by realists who are not afraid to dream. Let us be these people. — Tzipi Livni
A happy home is one in which each spouse grants the possibility that the other may be right, though neither believes it — Donald M. Fraser
The truth is, I pretend to be a cynic, but I am really a dreamer who is terrified of wanting something she may never get. — Joanna Hoffman
Love is everything it's cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. — Erica Jong
Try to be forgotten. Go live in the country. Stay in mourning for two years, then remarry, but choose somebody decent. — Alexander Pushkin
Cannes is a very strange place. I tried to show up as best I could and to try not to be cynical. — Lili Taylor
we know that our world is corrupt and diseased but we're tired of being cynical and feeling helpless. What the hell, tilt at a windmill. — Cynthia Heimel
Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
Cynical Person Quotes
Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness. — Leon Trotsky
Scientists have discovered that the small, brave act of cooperating with another person, of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the brain light up with quiet joy. — Natalie Angier
In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell. — H. L. Mencken
Watching you walk out of my life does not make me bitter or cynical about love. But rather makes me realize that if I wanted so much to be with the wrong person, how beautiful it will be when the right person comes along. — Nicholas Sparks
One of the very first things I figured out about life...is that it's better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun. — Barbara Kingsolver
I am a positive person. I am not cynical. If you are born in this world, no matter who you are, negative things will happen. If you aren't positive as a person, you'll be very unhappy. It's extremely important to be positive, to laugh, to be happy, to accept life as it comes. — Bipasha Basu
One person's magical thinking is another person's cynicism. — Damon Lindelof
You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today. — Richard Rohr
I'm the most cynical person, and I know what that sounds like when you say, I don't drink and drive, and I don't. But I know people look at that with skepticism, and I understand. — Tracey Gold
Eleanor Roosevelt is a political force of enormous ambitions. I believe she is a menace, unscrupulous as to truth, vain and cynical - all with a pretense of exaggerated kindness and human feeling which deceives millions of gullible persons. — Westbrook Pegler
Cynical Quotes
We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love. — Robert Fulghum
What a liberal really wants is to bring about change that will not in any way endanger his position. — Stokely Carmichael
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything that it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. — Erica Jong
A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference. — A. A. Milne
Things of the spirit are what count: brotherhood – in a day when there is too much hatred at home and abroad; cheerfulness – in a day when the pessimists have the floor and cynics are popular; service – in a day when millions are interested in getting or grasping, rather than giving — E. Urner Goodman
If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular? — Dorothy Parker
There's nothing more frustrating than seeing cynics sit there and say, 'Well, nobody can make any more money because Microsoft and Intel own everything.' Is the software industry mature, or is it embryonic? I would say it's embryonic. There will be a hundred more Microsofts, not just one. — Michael Saylor
A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. — Joseph Pulitzer
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. — William Shakespeare
Cynicism Quotes
I hear loads of cynics saying that I'll never be able to change anything. They say that junk food marketing and the ready availability of fast food is just too powerful. But I'd say in response, screw you. I know that most people, if they're really honest, are fed up with the same old rubbish — Jamie Oliver
We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian. — Lionel Trilling
Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create. — Calvin Coolidge
Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community. — John W. Gardner
Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. — George W. Bush
Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say - nothing can stop us now! — Thabo Mbeki
Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone. — Miller Williams
When the leaders speak of peace
The common folk know
That war is coming
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out. Every day, to earn my daily bread
I go to the market where lies are bought
Hopefully
I take up my place among the sellers.
— Bertolt Brecht
To give [the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba] even covert support is on a par with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world, nor on our own consciences. — J. William Fulbright
Political Cynicism Quotes
In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? — Barack Obama
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It will never be possible for any length of time for any group of the American people, either by reason of wealth or learning or inheritance or economic power, to retain any mandate, any permanent authority to arrogate to itself the political control of American public life. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
I've been a politician and so I'm sometimes cynical about what politicians won't do. When I hear a politician say something that makes no sense whatsoever, I think there's one of two things there: There's money or the promise of money. — Allan Boesak
When people treat corruption as a routine part of the process, you have something far worse than wrongdoing or moral failing. You have a political cancer that breeds cynicism about democratic government and infects all of society. — Edward Brooke
Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? Why, when it prospers, none dare call it treason. — John Harington
Without the truth of the people, politics degenerates into mere spectacle and democracy declines, leaving demagoguery and cynicism to fill the void. — Jerry Brown
What this generation was bred to at television's knees was not wisdom, but cynicism. — Pauline Kael
The commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts. — William Shakespeare
I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business. — Richard M. Nixon
Cynical Love Quotes
Strange to say what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition. — Samuel Pepys
History is neither written nor made without love or hate. — Theodor Mommsen
Love is the fart
Of every heart
It pains the man when 'tis kept close,
And others doth offend, when 'tis let loose. — John Suckling
HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is our birthright. Receptivity is a superpower. — Rob Brezsny
As Dostoevski said: 'Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. — Dorothy Day
You're killing yourself with cynicism. Your idols got taken away from you one by one and now you have nothing to give your love to. — Philip K. Dick
We muckraked, not because we hated our world, but because we loved it. We were not hopeless, we were not cynical, we were not bitter. — Ray Stannard Baker
We saw too much beauty to be cynical, felt too much joy to be dismissive, climbed too many mountains to be quitters, kissed too many girls to be deceivers, saw too many sunrises not to be believers, broke too many strings to be pro's and gave too much love to be concerned where it goes. — Glen Hansard
If you can fall in love again and again if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical you've got it half licked. — Henry Miller
No Cynic Quotes
If the great Government of the United States were a private corporation no bank would take its name on a piece of paper, because it has cynically repudiated the words engraved upon its bonds. — Garet Garrett
Never, ever, let anyone tell you what you can and can't do. Prove the cynics wrong. Pity them for they have no imagination. The sky's the limit. Your sky. Your limit. Now. Let's dance. — Tom Hiddleston
When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won't intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel. — Anton Chekhov
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes. — James Kern Feibleman
The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression. — H. L. Mencken
No guest is so welcome in a friend's house that he will not become a nuisance after three days. — Plautus
There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today's pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent. — Charles Krauthammer
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism. — Friedrich Nietzsche
There are no letters in the mailbox
And there are no grapes upon the vine
And there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore
And there are no diamonds in the mine — Leonard Cohen
Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing. — John F. Kennedy
If democracy is ever to be threatened, it will not be by revolutionary groups burning government offices and occupying the broadcasting and newspaper offices of the world. It will come from disenchantment, cynicism and despair caused by the realisation that the New World Order means we are all to be managed and not represented. — Tony Benn
People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress - in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness - dressed for the work that is to be done. — Walter Brueggemann
Be a light, not a judge, be a model not a critic. Little by little, your circle of influence will explode and you will avoid the emotional metastasizing cancers of complaining, criticizing, competing, comparing and cynicism, all which reflect victimization, all of which are the opposite of being proactive. — Stephen Covey
What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to p*ss off; ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time? Wouldn't you consider that to be insane? — Steve Buscemi
Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. — Stephen Colbert
The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline. — Michel Houellebecq
Many managers feel, somewhat cynically, that people are being paid to do their jobs and that's that. This attitude reflects an insensitivity to people that is a trademark of many hockey-style managers. — Phil Crosby
The coming years will prove increasingly cynical and cruel. People will definitely not slip into oblivion while hugging each other. The final stages in the life of humanity will be marked by the monstrous war of all against all: the amount of suffering will be maximal. — Pentti Linkola
What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism. — Abraham Verghese
Be sure that you first preach by the way you live. If you do not, people will notice that you say one thing, but live otherwise, and your words will bring only cynical laughter and a derisive shake of the head. — Carlo Borromeo
The church seeks to help form people who can risk being peaceful in a violent world, risk being kind in a competitive world, risk being faithful in an age of cynicism, risk being gentle among those who admire the tough, risk love when it may not be returned, because we have the confidence that in Christ we have been reborn into a new reality. — John Howard Yoder
We old bachelors smell like dogs, do we? So be it. But I must take issue with your claim that doctors who treat female illnesses are womanizers and cynics at heart. Gynecologists deal with savage prose the likes of which you have never dreamed of. — Anton Chekhov
I don't mock things, which makes me more vulnerable to mockery myself. If you're cynical, you're protected from mockery. But I have to be nice. I don't think I have irony. A sense of humour, yes, but not irony. — Michel Gondry
I fight cynicism. It`s too easy. It`s really boring. It`s much harder to be positive and see the wonder of everything. Cynicism is a bunch of people who aren`t as talented as other people, knocking them because they make them feel even more untalented. — Ewan McGregor
Take action. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life. Action is the antidote to apathy and cynicism and despair. You will inevitably make mistakes but at the end of your days, you will be remembered for your gallop, not for your stumble. — Bradley Whitford
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while — Groucho Marx
If you're conscious you must be depressed, or at least cynical. — Andrew VanWyngarden
Very few writers understand the complex history and maddening social order of the Mississippi Delta. For Steve Yarbrough, though, it's home turf. He is wickedly observant, funny, cynical, evocative, and he possesses a gift that cannot be taught: he can tell a story. — John Grisham
From being a dream, dams have become a very cynical corrupt enterprise; a way of letting governments lay their hands on huge sums of money; a way of centralizing resources; a way of snatching rivers away from the poor and giving them to the rich. And so in a sense they've become monuments to corruption. — Arundhati Roy
They sent me away to teach me how to be sensible, Logical, oh responsible, practical. And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical... — Roger Hodgson
Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste. — Simon Singh
The old adage, 'If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is' isn't always correct. In fact, the suspicion, cynicism, and doubt that are inherent in this belief can and does keep people from taking advantage of excellent opportunities. — Richard Carlson
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