Cynicism Quotes
Joseph Brodsky
Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
4609 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.
1956 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.
2670 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?
4561 Glen Cook
Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent.
4792 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.
1818 Edith Hamilton
Genius moves to creation, not to destruction. Only a very few have combined both.
4816 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.
4382 Scott Dikkers
A true friend is a gift from God. Since God doesn't exist, guess what? Neither do true friends.
4836 Jim Butcher
You're such a cynic," Molly said.
"I think cynics are playful and cute.
3216 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.
1578 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.
3640 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.
3716 Diogenes Of Sinope
It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.
2071 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.
1557 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.
4299 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.
4188 Jayce O'Neal
Cynicism places the cynic at the center seat of judgement with the self appointed authority to criticize and condemn.
1968 Sharon Kay Penman
…a cynic who was still saddened whenever his jaundiced view of mankind was confirmed...
3607 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.
3055 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.
1161 Louis L'Amour
To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.
2803 Susie Derkins
Sometimes I think books are the only friends worth having.
3639 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
1322 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.
1390 R.D. Ronald
I don't "lol". I tried it once but it just didn't agree with me.
2909 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.
1411 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.
2293 Jenny Holzer
If you behaved nicely, the communists wouldn't exist.
4399 Reza Aslan
A politician is a politician whether he's wearing a suit or a funny hat.
2120 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.
2945 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?
2101 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.
1229 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.
3739 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.
1709 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?
4156 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.
3555 H.P. Lovecraft
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.
4769 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.
1501 Glen Cook
Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.
1332 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.
4658 Tom Waits
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.
2882 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.
4743 Frank Herbert
motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.
2330 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.
2813 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.
2905 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.
4153 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.
1898 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.
4548 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.
2005 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.
2584