Cynic Quotes

1. "Maybe the adults around me were too cynical and old to do anything to help innocent people like Mrs. Kahn or Charlie, or the black kids who were called nigger at school, or the girls Tim Miller groped on the bus. Maybe they were numb enough to blame the system for things they were too lazy to change."
Author: A.S. King

2. "Californians don't have that marvelous British cynicism, but then the British can be so patronizing at times."
Author: Alex Kingston

3. "Cynicism is what passes for insight when courage is lacking"
Author: Anita Roddick

4. "The cynics, they can only speak of the dark, of the obvious, and this is not hard. For all it's supposed sophistication, it's cynicism that's simplistic. In a fallen world, how profound is to see the cracks?The sages and prophets, the disciples and revolutionaries, they are the ones up on the ramparts, up on the wall pointing to the dawn of the new Kingdom coming, pointing to the light that breaks through all things broken, pointing to redemption always rising and to the Blazing God who never sleeps."
Author: Ann Voskamp

5. "I have no cynicism at all."
Author: Antony Sher

6. "Cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom."
Author: Barack Obama

7. "If the world is to go beyond a curiosity well-guarded by cynicism in either academic tweeds or vulgar rap, YOUR POWER MUST BE EVIDENT IN MEETING MATERIAL NEEDS. And it can't just happen once. The world has seen us fail to make the difference here as a habit and an institution, so it needs to see us be that faithful conduit on the same scale."
Author: Brian Eshleman

8. "I've officially turned into a loser," she whispered cynically. "I'm looking forward to going home and having cereal for dinner and walking Mitchell and studying a little and then going to sleep. I've had my ‘going out and having fun' quota for the year, I guess, and it's June."
Author: Daniel Amory

9. "That was the splendid thing about life: Though it was cruel, it was also mysterious, filled with wonder and surprise; sometimes the surprises were so amazing that they qualified as miraculous, and by witnessing those miracles, a despondent person could discover a reason to live, a cynic could obtain unexpected relief from ennui, and a profoundly wounded boy could find the will to heal himself and medicine for melancholy."
Author: Dean Koontz

10. "What a cynic would call a coincidence, Amy called a clear answer, and more than an answer--a sign of the love of the Lord."
Author: Elisabeth Elliot

11. "Alice, winning means manipulation. It means taking people—people who may have helped you in the past, even people you care about—and using them without hesitation or regret. It means making decisions that would be viewed by any normal-thinking human being as cynical at best and dishonorable at worst"
Author: Elle Lothlorien

12. "Some change their philosophy of life with every book they read: one book sells them on Freud, the next on Marx; materialists one year, idealists the next; cynics for another period, and Eberals for still another. They have their quivers full of arrows but no fixed target. As no game makes the hunter tired of the sport, so the want of destiny makes the mind bored with life."
Author: Fulton J. Sheen

13. "I am a personal optimist but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right."
Author: George Carlin

14. "Brecht was a cynical bohemian bogey of the middle classes, but also much more than a mere provocateur. He developed and dramatized his political knowledge in remarkable ways, and was an outspoken, radical opponent of the war, its nationalism and its capitalism"
Author: Harold Bloom

15. "Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss"
Author: Helen Fielding

16. "What was sad in the world he did not superficially gainsay; what was glad in it he did not cynically slur; and all which was to him personally enjoyable, he gratefully took to his heart."
Author: Herman Melville

17. "A thousand years from now nobody is going to know that you or I ever lived. The cynic is right, but lazy. He says ‘You live, you die and nothing you do will ever make a difference.' But as long as I live, I'm going to be like Beethoven and shake my fist at fate and try to do something for those who live here now and who knows how far into the future that will go. If I accomplish nothing more than making my arm sore, at least I will be satisfied that I have lived."
Author: Jackson Burnett

18. "Sarah is the most enthusiastic cynical person on the planet. She'd be the perfect cheerleader if she weren't so disgusted by the notion of school spirit."
Author: Jandy Nelson

19. "Saddam Hussein is a product of Western departments of state and big companies, just as Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were born of the 'peace' imposed on their countries by the victors of the Great War. Saddam is such a product in an even more Flagrant and cynical way. Because the Iraqi dictatorship proceeds, as do the others, from the transfer of aporias in the capitalist system to vanquished, less developed, or simply less resistant countries."
Author: Jean François Lyotard

20. "Did you have friend?""I've read about them, but I don't believe they exist.""Your cynicism is amazing."
Author: Jodi Meadows

21. "I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all."
Author: John Fowles

22. "I think that all the anger and cynicism comes from suppressing things that we always wanted."
Author: John Lee Hancock

23. "The cynic says, 'One man can't do anything.' I say, 'Only one man can do anything.'"
Author: John W. Gardner

24. "Perhaps the biggest myth about cynicism is that it deepens with age. I think what really happens is that experience painfully rips away layers of scales from our eyes, and so we do indeed become more cynical about many of the things we naively accepted when younger."
Author: Julian Baggini

25. "Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems."
Author: Jurgen Habermas

26. "I felt slightl superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I became quite cynical talking to my student friends."
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

27. "All too easily, however, we can become distracted, scared, frustrated, gullible, cynical, or just plain inattentive. We suppress our natural questing spirit. We plow ahead without taking a good, hard look at what we're doing and why. And whether we realize it or not, we buy into ready made systems of thought, habit, and belief sold to us by our culture, families, friends, and associates. We fall into step with the herd and almost unthinkingly adhere to whatever cult(ure) we're brought up in, unconsciously living our received beliefs and assumptions, for the most part without question or examination."
Author: Lama Surya Das

28. "If I was working hard, she bled into my personality. I became more cynical."
Author: Marg Helgenberger

29. "Sex is not about reproduc-tion, gender is not about males and females, courtship is not aboutpersuasion, fashion is not about beauty, and love is not about affec-tion. Below the surface of every banality and cliche there lies irony,cynicism, and profundity."
Author: Matt Ridley

30. "Cynicism has all the smart words on it's side; idealism uses a nursery school dictionary."
Author: Michael Arditti

31. "I think I've finally proven something to people who were cynical about me. Because they were cruel."
Author: Nancy Sinatra

32. "The romantics would call this a love story, the cynics would call it a tragedy. In my mind it's a little bit of both, and no matter how you choose to view it in the end, it does not change the fact that it involves a great deal of my life and the path I've chosen to follow."
Author: Nicholas Sparks

33. "Cynicism is intellectual treason."
Author: Norman Cousins

34. "They were a remarkable company, each one of them a unique person, yet characterized to some extent by his particular national type. And all were distinctively "scientists" of the period. Formerly this would have implied a rather uncritical leaning towards materialism, and an affectation of cynicism; but by now it was fashionable to profess an equally uncritical belief that all natural phenomena were manifestations of the cosmic mind. In both periods, when a man passed beyond the sphere of his own serious scientific work he chose his beliefs irresponsibly, according to his taste, much as he chose his recreation or his food."
Author: Olaf Stapledon

35. "How anybody can compose a story by word of mouth face to face with a bored-looking secretary with a notebook is more than I can imagine. Yet many authors think nothing of saying, 'Ready, Miss Spelvin? Take dictation. Quote no comma Sir Jasper Murgatroyd comma close quotes comma said no better make it hissed Evangeline comma quote I would not marry you if you were the last person on earth period close quotes Quote well comma I'm not so the point does not arise comma close quotes replied Sir Jasper twirling his moustache cynically period And so the long day wore on period End of chapter.'If I had to do that sort of thing I should be feeling all the time that the girl was saying to herself as she took it down, 'Well comma this beats me period How comma with homes for the feebleminded touting for custom on every side comma has a man like this succeeded in remaining at large mark of interrogation."
Author: P.G. Wodehouse

36. "It was not for me, after these last seventy-two hours, to reject as too outlandish the possibility that the situation for him here had driven George crazy. Yet I did reject it. It was just too insipid a conclusion. Not everybody was cray. Resolute is not crazy. Deluded is not crazy. To be thwarted, vengeful, terrified, treacherous--this is not to be crazy. Not even fanatically held illusions are crazy, and deceit certainly isn't crazy--deceit, deviousness, cunning, cynicism, all of that is far from crazy...and there, that, deceit, there was the key to my confusion. Of course!"
Author: Philip Roth

37. "Let's get drunk," I state, clinking my glass with his."Sure you want to do that?" Dorian says with a raised eyebrow. He gives me that look a lot, probably because of all my questionable behavior. "I'm not sure of anything anymore," I say with a cynical chuckle. "But I know I'm tired of disappointment. And I'm tired of keeping secrets. And I'm tired of fucking things up!"Dorian nods, understanding my frustration. "Do you want me to help you?" he asks quietly. I know what he means. Dorian is offering to fix me like he did the day before."No," I shake my head. "I want you to drink with me. Then I want you to do things to me that are as dirty and immoral as I already feel." I take another hefty gulp and let the searing burn strip away the guilt and shame in my chest. "Ok, let's get drunk." And with that Dorian downs the entire contents of his glass and turns on the music."
Author: S.L. Jennings

38. "Anything that has cynicism to it and that's jaded is smutty."
Author: Sandra Bernhard

39. "The F word turns me on, she whispered. The F word?FoodHe threw back his head and laughed. It rumbled up out of his chest and felt so good it startled him. For the first time in years,his laughter was spontaneous. It wasn`t tinged with bitterness and cynicism."
Author: Sandra Brown

40. "That's the hardest thing of all--never to become cynical, never to lose faith, never to become indifferent."
Author: Sergei Lukyanenko

41. "But I'm trying not to be cynical - I don't want to be one of those people who has a cool opportunity and blows it. It's really amazing what's happening to me."
Author: Shannyn Sossamon

42. "Cynicism is tough. A cynic's point of view is really pitiful. I derive pleasure out of a lot of things in life. As long as I'm fairly healthy, it's hard to stay dismal for very long."
Author: Shawn Colvin

43. "If I was a cynic I would be wondering if sooner or later some charismatic douche-bag might stomp all over this Little House on the Prairie dream of yours."
Author: Stephen Baxter

44. "Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages, the abstraction known as 'the intelligent layperson' does exist - in the form of millions of folks with a passionate commitment to continuous learning."
Author: Stephen Jay Gould

45. "You happened to me,You scare me to death, you know. When you stormed into my life, you turned everything inside out. You upset all the things I believed about myself and made me think in new ways. I know who I used to be, but I'm finally ready to figure out who I am. Cynicism gets tiring, Isabel, and you've . . . rested me.And don't you dare tell me you've stopped loving me back, because you're still a better person than I am, and I'm counting on you to take more care with my heart than I took with yours."
Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips

46. "The cynic is goodhearted beneath his facade, whereas the sentimentalist is flint-hearted beneath his."
Author: Sydney J. Harris

47. "Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and wind at eighty miles an hour.That would do it every time."
Author: Terry Pratchett

48. "They were Archer's second set of children an d paragons of contemporary teenage cynicism. They enjoyed setting fire to the tails of tender thoughts."
Author: Tom Wolfe

49. "Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism."
Author: Twyla Tharp

50. "It's an indication of how cynical our society has become that any kind of love story with a sad theme is automatically ridiculed as sentimental junk."
Author: Winona Ryder

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