Cynical Quotes

1. "The revelation that there was nothing "special" about humanity didn't shock her. Not specifically. She'd always been cynical about that sort of thing. The idea that reality was all too big to even quantify in any meaningful way didn't disturb her much either. Except, deep down, she'd assumed there was some inherent logic at work. Like ricocheting molecules congealing into planets and stars, dogs and cats. At least the made sense, even if it wasn't very comforting. At least it put things in neat little boxes with neat little labels that she didn't always understand but could rely on in terms of familiarity."
Author: A. Lee Martinez

2. "Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition, read the dry sardonic remarks of cynical philosophers like Cioran or even Carl Schmitt, read newspapers, read those who despise, dismiss or simply ignore poetry and try to understand why they do it. Read your enemies, read those who reinforce your sense of what's evolving in poetry, and also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can't understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are."
Author: Adam Zagajewski

3. "Never shy away from opportunity and wholehearted living. Never be fearful of putting yourself out there. The courageous may encounter many disappointments, experience profound disillusionment, gather many wounds; but cherish your scars for they are the proud emblems of a truly phenomenal life. The fearful, cautious, cynical and self-repressed do not live at all. And that is simply no way to be in this world."
Author: Anthon St. Maarten

4. "For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food."
Author: Anthony Bourdain

5. "If a friend had a coronary scare and finally started exercising three days a week, who would hound him about the other four days? It's the worst of bad manners—and self-protection, I think, in a nervously cynical society—to ridicule the small gesture."
Author: Barbara Kingsolver

6. "I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest."
Author: Boris Johnson

7. "It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody."
Author: Brendan Behan

8. "As the rain falls and the sun shines, they grow, grow, grow; minds so open, they go through life aware and accepting, seeing light where there's dark, seeing possibility in dead ends, tasting victory as others spit out failure, questioning where others accept. Just a little less jaded, a little less cynical."
Author: Cecelia Ahern

9. "I'm getting old, thought Eileen Calder. Old and worn out and cynical. And being cynical is a lot worse than being old or worn out."
Author: Charles Sheffield

10. "Being cynical isn't necessarily being negative or bitter. It's a person who is wary of mistaking love for something that it's not and getting their heart broken."
Author: Charlyne Yi

11. "Countless generations have set out convinced that they would succeed where other had failed – that's where lawyers and reporters come from, you know. They're the cynical corpses of idealistic young people who thought the system could be reformed."
Author: CrimethInc.

12. "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

13. "As a parent, I want my kids to have an optimistic outlook, and one that has hope, and that makes sense, where good does triumph over evil and it's not cynical, and it's not snarky."
Author: Dee Bradley Baker

14. "You are a cynical man, Mr. Pleasant.""We live in cynical times, Miss Cain."
Author: Derek Landy

15. "We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?"
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

16. "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

17. "I was determined not to become an American citizen but I did it for completely cynical reasons: to avoid paying inheritance tax in the U.S."
Author: Emily Mortimer

18. "We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we're faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off."
Author: Federico Fellini

19. "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."
Author: Garet Garrett

20. "Give me priests who are fat and corrupt and cynical,(...) the sort who like to sit on soft satin cushions, nibble sweetmeats, and diddle little boys. It's the ones who believe in gods who make the trouble. (Tyrion)"
Author: George R.R. Martin

21. "Generally I don't like doing remakes, but I think that's more in the cynical world of Hollywood where normally remakes are purely for commercial reasons."
Author: Gerard Butler

22. "Having her in my arms feels like coming home. I am not one to believe in all that love at first sight bullshit, but even as cynical as I am, I can recognize something bigger than lust at work. My body wants her; that is no secret, but the level of want is borderline craving. I need her. Needing someone is not something I am used to. No, I am used to being needed… something this woman clearly doesn't want."
Author: Harper Sloan

23. "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

24. "Some book reviewer whose name I forget recently called me a 'vicious misanthrope' . . . or maybe it was a 'cynical misanthrope'. . . but either way, he (or she) was right; and what got me this way was politics."
Author: Hunter S. Thompson

25. "Hope was a pathological part of puberty, like acne and surging hormones. You might sound cynical to the world, but that was just a defense mechanism, cover up coating a zit, because it was too embarrassing to admit that in spite of the bum deals you kept getting you hadn't completely given up."
Author: Jodi Picoult

26. "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" "I can't remember. Which?" "Do you know what those words mean?" "Not really." "An optimist is positive and hopeful. A pessimist is negative and cynical." "I'm an optimist." "Well, that's good, because there's no irrefutable evidence. There's nothing that could convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to."
Author: Jonathan Safran Foer

27. "Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us."
Author: Kamala Harris

28. "She had always maintained a cynical facade, using it as a defence against embarrassment, fear, loneliness… but at the moment she felt unusually vulnerable."
Author: Lisa Kleypas

29. "Does anyone swim in there?""Everyone does." Without thinking, he added, "I can bring you back sometime when we're not so pressed for—" Trace caught himself before finishing that awesome thought. Pressed for time or not, the odds of him ever returning here with Priss were slim to none.Gaze cynical, Priss looked at him over her shoulder. "Yeah, right. Maybe we'll do that." She turned to face him. "Sometime when we're not at odds, when we're not dealing with a madman who enjoys selling women, when you haven't just drugged me earlier in the day?"Trace rubbed the back of his neck. "All of the above."
Author: Lori Foster

30. "If by ‘foe' you mean a brutal killer, then I suppose I'd fall into the ‘friend' category," I replied cynically. "Although in your case, we may have to find a secret option number three."
Author: M.A. George

31. "As we get older - perhaps I'm just speaking for myself - we can get too cynical."
Author: Matt Smith

32. "Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass."
Author: Max Ehrmann

33. "We would have died without the additional men," he admitted matter-of-factly. "But we would have taken the entire Mede army with us. Poets would have written about us, and songs would have been sung about us-""For all the good that would have done your dead bodies," Eugenides cynically interrupted."Well, I wasn't looking forward to it," said Sounis caustically. "But over our dead bodies the Medes would never have been accepted by the people of Sounis. Much more likely that they would have allied with Attolia." He looked at Eugenides, who was still eyeing him in surprise. "I didn't expect to die," he said. "I knew you would send help.""Why?"It was Sounis's turn to be surprised. He said, "You told me you needed me to be Sounis. I am. I needed my king to send me help. You did. There had to be reinforcements at Oneia, so they were there." To him it was obvious.Eugenides swallowed. "I see."
Author: Megan Whalen Turner

34. "People think it's easy to be cynical and pessimistic, but it's incredibly hard work. It's much easier to be hopeful."
Author: Michael Robotham

35. "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."
Author: Michel Houellebecq

36. "This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted."
Author: Milan Kundera

37. "I think we sort of are all fans of love really, if you're not then you're too cynical aren't you?"
Author: MyAnna Buring

38. "I really ought to try and make a film that's a bit more cynical. But I don't think I'd know how to do it. I think what it is, is that if you're a film director, you're basically there because you enjoy manipulating people's emotions."
Author: Nigel Cole

39. "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

40. "The rich are not born sceptical or cynical. They are made that way by events, circumstances."
Author: Paul Getty

41. "Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it."
Author: Paul Tillich

42. "I do believe that freedom isn't free - but today the corporate and political right wing is trying to cheapen this truly American value. They've been cynically using the word 'freedom' to rally the American public against its own best interests."
Author: Richard Trumka

43. "I had grown up during Vietnam. I had no connections to the U.S. military, and I had a pretty cynical default opinion about the U.S. military."
Author: Sebastian Junger

44. "Many families are managed on the basis of crises, moods, quick fixes, and instant gratification—not on sound principles. Symptoms surface whenever stress and pressure mount: people become cynical, critical, or silent or they start yelling and overreacting. Children who observe these kinds of behavior grow up thinking the only way to solve problems is flight or fight."
Author: Stephen R. Covey

45. "Sure, I'm dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But, in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself."
Author: Sylvia Plath

46. "I think I'm too cynical for L.A. My sense of humor doesn't go down well here, which probably affects my love life. I need to have a laugh track following me around so people know I'm trying to be funny."
Author: Teddy Thompson

47. "The need always to lie and always to avoid the truth stripped everyone of what Custine called ‘the two greatest gifts of God—the soul and the speech which communicates it.' People became hypocritical, cunning, mistrustful, cynical, silent, cruel, and indifferent to the fate of others as a result of the destruction of their own souls."
Author: Theodore Dalrymple

48. "Politicians.Their first thoughts are always with the loved ones of the British serviceman tragically killed in action.And whether they'll vote New Labour at the next election.There's no need to be cynical, Susan.Why not?You've got me there."
Author: William Donaldson

49. "Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated."
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

50. "Your generation is so cynical. You should try to help every individual person you meet, Ari, as a reflex, without thinking." Ari put his head on the steering wheel. "Here we find a fundamental weakness of the Christ doctrine," the Minister declared, making that wise and relatable face that had always been such a success in his television lectures. "It troubles itself too much with conscience, rationale, and so on. Now, I myself am a student of human nature. I observe all faiths, and draw my own conclusions. For example, a Christian sees a tramp in the street, he begins agonizing. Should I give him the money in my pocket? What if he uses it for drink? What if he wastes it? What if there's someone else who needs it more? What if I need it more? And so on. The Jews, the Muslims—they see a tramp, they give him money, they walk on. The action is its own justification."
Author: Zadie Smith

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