Cynicism Quotes

Joseph Brodsky

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

Dorothy Parker

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.

Terry Pratchett

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.

Bill Bryson

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?

Glen Cook

Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent.

King Michael Of Romania

Tomorrow's world can not exist without morals, without faith and memory. Cynicism, narrow interests and cowardice must not occupy our lives.

Edith Hamilton

Genius moves to creation, not to destruction. Only a very few have combined both.

Mike Royko

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.

Scott Dikkers

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

Jim Butcher

You're such a cynic," Molly said.

"I think cynics are playful and cute.

Leon Trotsky

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.

Conan O'Brien

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.

Diogenes Of Sinope

Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.

Matt Taibbi

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.

Diogenes Of Sinope

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

Diogenes Of Sinope

I am a citizen of the world.

Leonid Andreyev

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

James Scott Bell

...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.

Jayce O'Neal

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

Cynicism places the cynic at the center seat of judgement with the self appointed authority to criticize and condemn.

Sharon Kay Penman

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

Derek Landy

It all depends on what people you're talking about helping. That's the wonderful think about just about every religion on the planet - they're all so incredibly selfish.

Michael Crichton

Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.

Megan Chance

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

Louis L'Amour

To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.

Susie Derkins

Sometimes I think books are the only friends worth having.

Jules Barbey-d'Aurevilly

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

John Irving

Life is serious but art is fun!

R.D. Ronald

I'm not into this whole "move with the times" thing. I reckon we should just decide on a year and stick with it.

R.D. Ronald

I don't "lol". I tried it once but it just didn't agree with me.

John Green

We are literally in the heart of Jesus," he said.
"I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literally in the heart of Jesus."
"Someone should tell Jesus," I said. "I mean, it's gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart.

Terry Pratchett

I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.

Jenny Holzer

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

Reza Aslan

A politician is a politician whether he's wearing a suit or a funny hat.

Michael Dobbs

Morality, Sir, is the monologue of the unexcited and the unexcitable, the revenge of the unsuccessful, the punishment of those who tried and failed, or who never had the courage to try at all.

Caroline Kepnes

That's the problem with this never-ending centipede of lemmings, Beck. You know they're all pussies, each and every one of 'em. They buy these books to get scared because their lives are too easy. How pathetic is that?

Robert K. Massie

She (historian Barbara Tuchman) draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human ability as amused and saddened by human folly.

Jess C. Scott

It's weird, marriage. It's like this license that gives a person the legal right to control their spouse / their 'other half.

Sigmund Freud

In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.

Julian Barnes

Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren’t treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you’re on the right side?

Paul Leppin

The atmosphere was electrified by the orgasm with which the strong and secure are overcome when confronted with the visible frailty of someone worse off than themselves.

H.P. Lovecraft

Only a cynic can create horror-for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving
Only a cynic can create horror-for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving demonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.

Rebecca West

Now, he told me, I could see what humanity was worth. It could form the conception of justice, but could not trust its flesh to provide judges. Whatever it started was likely to end in old men raving. There was ruin everywhere and we should see more of it.

Glen Cook

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

Tammara Webber

I dreamed about the future because that's what people persuade you to do when you're a kid, but that's the biggest lie of all-that you can plan. Reality is, you have no fucking clue what's coming and neither do they.

Tom Waits

The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.

Ewan McGregor

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.

Frank Herbert

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

Mikhail Lermontov

I am not capable of true friendship. One of the two friends is always the slave of the other, although, often, neither of the two admits this to himself.

Matt Taibbi

These leaders are like the drug lords who ruled America’s ghettos in the crack age, men (and some women) interested in just two things: staying in power, and hoovering up enough of what’s left of the cash on their blocks to drive around in an Escalade or a 633i for however long they have left.

K.J. Parker

Obviously, there’s no way of making money that doesn’t hurt somebody somewhere, but there are degrees of scale and immediacy. A merchant prince or a banker or a wealthy landowner isn’t generally required to take responsibility for the people he cheats, screws and starves; society couldn’t function if that were the case.

Anthon St. Maarten

Constantly exposing yourself to popular culture and the mass media will ultimately shape your reality tunnel in ways that are not necessarily conducive to achieving your Soul Purpose and Life Calling. Modern society has generally ‘lost the plot’. Slavishly following its false gods and idols makes no sense in a spiritually aware life.

Paul Hoffman

We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy.

Caitlin Moran

When young people are cynical, and snarky, they shoot down their own future. When you keep saying "No," all that's left is what other people said "Yes" to before you were born. Really, "No" is no choice at all.

Marc Maron

Everyone is a little bitter. We're born bitter. The personality itself is really just a very complex defense mechanism. A reaction to the first time someone said, "No you can't.

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