Quotes About Cynicism

Trent gave me a weary look. "Always seeing the best in a person, Ms. Morgan?" "Yeah. Except with you."

Uh-huh," she said. He was beginning to recognize that was her way of indicating untruth.

So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake ... Religion is all bunk.

Of religion I know nothing -- at least, in its favor.

Maybe a new religion will rise now. Maybe without it, man will crumble in cynicism and selfishness because he really needs his gods.

Never expect people to understand, respect or love you, they are just a bunch of dirty flesh and fake skins. Staring to eat you when you are fat enough.

The waste, the insane freaks of these money men, the cynicism and egotism of their life... I'll show that they are not brilliant, not romantic, not delightful, not intelligent.

It is cynicism, and not idealism, that is generally the mark of youthful immaturity, or rather it is the cynic who is generally the most foolish romantic.

Most cynics are really crushed romantics: they've been hurt, they're sensitive, and their cynicism is a shell that's protecting this tiny, dear part in them that's still alive.

We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism.

Okay, so maybe I'm romantic... but somebody is supposed to be romantic. Some warrior is supposed to go to war against the imperial forces of cynicism and irony. I am a sentimental soldier.

We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. ("X")

The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority.

The cynics—well aware that there is nobody who despises the imagination so thoroughly as the dreamer

Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who founded the Cynical school, lived in a barrel. When Alexander the Great once visited Diogenes as he was relaxing in the sun, and asked if there were anything he might do for him, the Cynic answered the all-powerful conqueror, 'Yes, there is something you can do for me. Please move a little to the side. You are blocking the sunlight.

Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who founded the Cynical school, lived in a barrel. When Alexander the Great once visited Diogenes as he was relaxing in the sun, and asked if there were anything he might do for him, the Cynic answered the all-powerful conqueror, 'Yes, there is something you can do for me. Please move a little to the side. You are blocking the sunlight.' This

Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.

This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave.

I think trusting that God is good is one of the hardest steps there is to take. We get conditioned to expect to be let down. We get conditioned to not trust, because we trusted and we get burned. We get conditioned to be reserved and not take things at face value because we've learned nothing is ever at face value in life.

The death of awe in our culture has left us with an oddly credulous cynicism. We are cynical, suspicious of established government, education, technology, and medicine. Yet our cynicism is the recycled remnant of dashed hopes and broken faith, precisely because, having lost sight of the God who is worthy, we have invested such trust in these institutions to save our civilization and us.

I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.

How surely a knowledge of the world hardens the heart!

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.

The only dependable law of life - everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.