Cynical famous quotes
05-15-2025
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Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
-- Abraham Verghese -
We always reference kids but very rarely ask their opinion. Our inexperience might be what gives us the ability to teach our elders something, due to the fact that we are not jaded or cynical.
-- Adora Svitak -
Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
-- Alain de Botton -
If anything good came out of 9/11, to me, was that people were so cynical about the world - all you hear about on the news is all the bad stuff everyday, but what was refreshing to me was after that, you saw how many good people there are out there. For every one bad one, there's a thousand good ones.
-- Alan Jackson -
Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.
-- Albert Camus -
Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.
-- Aldous Huxley -
You may have good relationships and you may have bad. You just have to roll with it and truly believe, and not be cynical. But, it's hard. You go through four relationships where you're not happy and you've been cheated on, or whatever - and I'm not saying this has happened to me - but you have to still believe.
-- Alex Pettyfer -
Powerful people doing bad things LIKE cynical, despairing citizens.
-- Alex Steffen -
As human beings we're so cynical, so uncompassionate.
-- Alicia Silverstone -
Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.
-- Allan Bloom -
A lot of people think I'm cynical when I talk about acting. The truth of the matter is, I just don't want someone to get some lame advice that will send them in the wrong direction
-- Amber Tamblyn -
Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
I was expecting it to be cynical because I'm like that myself. I wouldn't want it to be all roses because life isn't like that.
-- Amy Winehouse -
A well governed people are generally a people who do not think much.
-- Andre Siegfried -
Do you want to injure someone's reputation? Don't speak ill of him, speak too well.
-- Andre Siegfried -
It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.
-- Ann Beattie -
This is such a cynical world. The way the world is, there's so much going on and so much stress in the world and so much darkness and craziness and imbalance.
-- Ann Wilson -
I'm a realist all the way. I'm too cynical to be an optimist. But I've lived too much of a charmed life so far to ever be a pessimist.
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful.
-- Anton Szandor LaVey -
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
-- Arthur C. Clarke -
The men of the press, who despised their own profession, did not know why they were enjoying it today. One of them, a young man with years of notorious success behind him and a cynical look of twice his age, said suddenly, 'I know what I'd like to be: I wish I could be a man who covers news!'
-- Ayn Rand -
Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.
-- Bell Hooks -
I'm not the type of guy who enjoys one-night stands. It leaves me feeling very empty and cynical. It's not even fun sexually. I need to feel something for the woman and entertain the vain hope that it may lead to a relationship.
-- Ben Affleck -
The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.
-- Benjamin Franklin -
I can say that even in the midst of my most cynical comic stripping: Opus shone through with a bit of heart, anchoring the ugly proceedings with a comforting pull of emotion.
-- Berkeley Breathed -
I remember laughing when we made those slogans up [about abortion]. . . . We were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion. They were very cynical slogans then, just as all of these slogans today are very, very cynical.
-- Bernard Nathanson -
I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out.
-- Bill Hicks -
'Peace' is when nobody's shooting. A 'just peace' is when our side gets what it wants.
-- Bill Mauldin -
It's so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.
-- Bono -
I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest.
-- Boris Johnson -
It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.
-- Brendan Behan -
I love writers who are insightful enough to be cynical but choose not to be.
-- Brian D. McLaren -
Conscience is what your mother told you before you were six years old.
-- Brock Chisholm -
Saying you have a political solution is like saying you can write a pop song that's going to stay at the top of the list forever. I don't have many illusions about this, but I'm not cynical about it.
-- Bruce Sterling -
Be sure that you first preach by the way you live. If you do not, people will notice that you say one thing, but live otherwise, and your words will bring only cynical laughter and a derisive shake of the head.
-- Carlo Borromeo -
Juliana's a year older than me, but she sometimes seems younger - mostly because she's the opposite of cynical and I'm the opposite of the opposite of cynical.
-- Claire LaZebnik -
I would say most comedians have a very cynical worldview of the way the world can work. It's almost like if you didn't, you couldn't be a comedian.
-- Colin Quinn -
If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.
-- Cory Doctorow -
we know that our world is corrupt and diseased but we're tired of being cynical and feeling helpless. What the hell, tilt at a windmill.
-- Cynthia Heimel -
Nearly half a century has passed since Watson proclaimed his manifesto. Today, apart from a few minor reservations, the vast majority of psychologists, both in this country and in America, still follow his lead. The result, as a cynical onlooker might be tempted to say, is that psychology, having first bargained away its soul and then gone out of its mind, seems now, as it faces an untimely end, to have lost all consciousness.
-- Cyril Burt -
Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.
-- D. H. Lawrence -
So long as human history continues, we will face the perennial challenge of realizing, maintaining and strengthening peace through dialogue, of making dialogue the sure and certain path to peace. We must uphold and proclaim this conviction without cease, whatever coldly knowing smiles or cynical critiques may greet us.
-- Daisaku Ikeda -
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
-- Dante Gabriel Rossetti -
My church accepts all denominations - fivers, tenners, twenties.
-- Dave Allen -
Charitable endeavour exalts the prestige and the status of the giver. This may sound unduly cynical but as with all philantrophic activity, it is not easy to unravel the mutually reinforcing motives of selflessness and self-interest. All that can safely be said is that most members of the royal family have difficulty distinguishing between concern about society, concern about the social order and concern about what best to do so they can remain at the top of it.
-- David Cannadine -
What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.
-- David Foster Wallace -
Sorry to be so cynical, but this is New York
-- David Levithan -
Obama's position on marriage is brazenly cynical.
-- David Limbaugh -
I love Billy Wilder, and I love the way that his films can be very touching and very moving and very romantic, and at the same time there's always a little cynical undertone, there's always something that undercuts things.
-- David Nicholls -
Whatever politicians, activists and manipulators propose, it is the phlegmatic, indifferent, ingrained electorate which disposes.
-- Don Aitkin -
Wonder is very necessary in life. When we're little kids, we're filled with wonder for the world - it's fascinating and miraculous. A lot of people lose that. They become cynical and jaded, especially in modern day society. Magic renews that wonder.
-- Doug Henning -
Hippy, you think everything is a conspiracy. Everything is!
-- Ed Harris -
Someone once remarked that in adolescence ***** is a substitute for sex, whereas in adulthood sex is a substitute for pornography.
-- Edmund White -
For the fee of $10,000, anyone could be escorted to a room, handed a loaded gun and offered another human to kill. The concept made me nauseous. But it also felt real, and rang bells with my more cynical side.
-- Eli Roth -
EMILY's List has worked a lot with swing women voters over the years, and one thing we've learned is that they are very cynical about politics and politicians. They very much want help with the challenges facing them and their families, and they feel like most politicians don't understand or want to lift a finger to help them out.
-- Ellen Malcolm -
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.
-- Emily Mortimer -
If I never saw another airport again, I'd be happy!
-- Emm Gryner -
...Sometimes I suspect that what had really happened was that we became more resigned, more cynical, raised our pain thresholds as we lowered our expectations. All in all, settled for less.
-- Emma Donoghue -
When the Chinese government tells its citizens that they can worship in a certain building on a certain day, but once they leave that building they must bow to the secular orthodoxy of the state, you have a cynical lie at work. They’ve substituted a toothless ‘freedom of worship’ for ‘freedom of religion’.
-- Eric Metaxas -
Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.
-- Erica Jong -
We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion.
-- Erica Jong -
I am not cynical. I am just old. I know what is going to happen next.
-- Fay Weldon -
We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.
-- Federico Fellini -
One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
A woman is faithful to her first lover for a long time - unless she happens to take a second.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright -
It is time to provide a smashing answer for those cynical men who say that a democracy cannot be honest, cannot be efficient.... We have in the darkest moments of our national trials retained our faith in our own ability to master our own destiny.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt -
I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt -
Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.
-- Franklin P. Adams -
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
-- Franz Kafka -
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
-- George Bernard Shaw -
Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
-- George Carlin -
The management system which makes only a pretense of valuing employee involvement and encouraging employee empowerment merely breeds cynicism.
-- George E. P. Box -
The business world worships mediocrity. Officially we revere free enterprise, initiative and individuality. Unofficially we fear it.
-- George Lois -
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.
-- Gerard Butler -
Reviewers and critics can be overly cynical. If something the least bit sentimental comes up, they'll often start flying off the handle. But I'm like, 'Wait a minute, you've had those times in your life. Everybody has.
-- Gilberto Hernandez Guerrero -
I've always felt that if I ever got cynical, I would have to stop making music because I'd just be poisoning the air.
-- Glen Hansard -
We saw too much beauty to be cynical, felt too much joy to be dismissive, climbed too many mountains to be quitters, kissed too many girls to be deceivers, saw too many sunrises not to be believers, broke too many strings to be pro's and gave too much love to be concerned where it goes....
-- Glen Hansard -
We have never done anything in a cynical fake way
-- Gordon Ramsay -
A comedian's a comedian. They're a very kind of cynical bunch. I guess that's why I like them.
-- Graham Norton -
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while
-- Groucho Marx -
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
-- H. L. Mencken -
It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption.
-- H. Rider Haggard -
Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don't swallow it.
-- Hank Ketcham -
Take away the Holocaust and what do you have left? Without their precious Holocaust, what are the Jews? Just a grubby little bunch of international bandits and assassins and squatters who have perpetrated the most massive, cynical fraud in human history.
-- Harold Covington -
Valentine's Day purely commercial, cynical enterprise, anyway. Matter of supreme indifference to me.
-- Helen Fielding -
My doctor grabbed me by the wallet and said,'Cough'
-- Henny Youngman -
The worst thing that can happen in a democracy - as well as in an individual's life - is to become cynical about the future and lose hope.
-- Hillary Clinton
