Cynicism Quotes

By the time you swear you're his,Shivering and sighing.And he vows his passion is,Infinite, undying.Lady make note of this --One of you is lying.

~ Dorothy Parker

If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.

~ Terry Pratchett

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse

~ Joseph Brodsky

Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent.

~ Glen Cook

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

All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.

~ Conan O'brien

As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?

~ Bill Bryson

Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn't the faintest idea what the heck is really going on.

~ Mike Royko

A true friend is a gift from God. Since God doesn't exist, guess what? Neither do true friends.

~ Scott Dikkers

It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.

~ Diogenes Of Sinope

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

~ Diogenes Of Sinope

I am a citizen of the world.

~ Diogenes Of Sinope

Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.

~ Diogenes Of Sinope

To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this:1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason.2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right.3. Charity is immoral.4. Pay for your own fucking schools.

~ Matt Taibbi

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.

~ Kingsley Amis

I never feel unsafe except for when the majority is on my side.

~ Criss Jami

Cressida: My lord, will you be true?Troilus: Who, I? Alas, it is my vice, my fault:Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion,I with great truth catch mere simplicity;Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.Fear not my truth: the moral of my witIs plain and true; there's all the reach of it.

~ William Shakespeare

...God created the world in six days. On the seventh day, he rested. On the eighth day, he started getting complaints. And it hasn't stopped since.

~ James Scott Bell

Cynicism is when a small mind and a hurt heart rejects the hope, love, and truth of a big and caring God.

~ Jayce O'neal

Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. 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. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes'.

~ Stephen Colbert

I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!

~ Jean Anouilh

Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness.

~ T.h. White

…a cynic who was still saddened whenever his jaundiced view of mankind was confirmed...

~ Sharon Kay Penman

Some people grow older and more cynical. Some people become just the opposite. Life hurts without hope, and cynicism, once a luxury, becomes unaffordable.

~ William Norwich

Seeing the mud around a lotus is pessimism, seeing a lotus in the mud is optimism.

~ Amit Kalantri

Life seemed to him to be a narrow cage, and her iron bars were many and dense, and there was only one way out.

~ Leonid Andreyev

They say the distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success, I believe you can say the same thing about the distance between good and evil.

~ Carl R White

Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good...

~ Milan Kundera

It seems all spirits need theatrics, eh? Even Christ himself requires incense and holy water. We're a skeptical people. We need convincing.

~ Megan Chance

As for the belief that humanity is mostly good, Secular humanism, when in that alignment, always presumes the existence of a higher power, or some god-like influence on man. Because it then becomes the belief that people are generally good and should be protected from the wiles of religion, as though this dark, vague and ignorant force once fell from the heavens, latched onto the purer hearts and minds of men and women, and, in all its forms, controlled and polluted the whole of human history. He says, 'When we defeat religion, humanity will be free.' But, if he were duly consistent, if he were really at all as secular as he claims, he might as well admit to what is actually an underlying brand of nihilistic cynicism: 'When we defeat humans, humanity will be free.

~ Criss Jami

In Paris, where raillery is so quick to throw emotion out the window, silence, in a roomful of clever people after a story, is the most flattering of all marks of success

~ Jules Barbey D'aurevilly

The only activity a cynic will find contagious is yawning, that is, with other people, at other people.

~ Criss Jami

Has anybody ever told you you’re a remarkably cynical person?”“I like to think of it as learning from experience.

~ Benedict Jacka

Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.

~ Michael Crichton

Sometimes I think books are the only friends worth having.

~ Susie Derkins

The continuation of man’s life is more attributable to his fear of death than it is to his desire to live. As a matter of fact, in countless cases, it is attributable to only the former.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.

~ Frank Herbert

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

Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.

~ Glen Cook

If you behaved nicely, the communists wouldn't exist.

~ Jenny Holzer