Quotes About Cynicism

I never believed that U2 wanted to save the whales. I don't believe that The Beastie Boys are ready to lay it down for Tibet.

I think that the worst form of naivete can be extreme cynicism. If you think that nobody comes to Washington to do any good whatsoever, that is almost as bad as being starry-eyed and thinking that they are all here to advance democracy.

Cynicism is kind of like folding your arms and stepping back and commenting on things, like the old guys in 'The Muppets,' just throwing out comments all the time, whereas there are other people on the ground really trying to affect things and improve their lives and the lives of other people. I think it's noble and I think it's cool.

For me, the more I think about the problems of the world, I feel I have to be positive. I wouldn't like to fall into cynicism or nihilism. That's not in my nature.

I defy anyone to produce any evidence that the word 'happy' has ever crossed my lips. I am not now, nor have I ever been, 'happy.'

Real movie producers aren't this nice.

So okay, the world through my eyes, what is that world? Well, I see a lot of dirty stuff, and I see a lot of dumb stuff.

I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed.

If you hang around politics long enough, you tend to get disappointed by people.

It seems to me that election season is just a Petri dish for anger and cynicism.

You have to try to dismiss the loudness of cynicism. It's certainly going to come.

I have a lot of friends that take that position of extreme cynicism, and I just can't let myself go to that place. It's just too easy, and it's just too defeatist.

I have a jaundiced eye but a young mind.

No one ever wants to be the girl that got her relationship wrong again, but if you let your cynicism take over you risk never falling in love.

I think that young people - teenagers, college-age people, anyone under the age of 30 - know when they're being pandered to.

I don't think the government is out to get me or help someone else get me but it wouldn't surprise me if they were out to sell me something or help someone else sell me something. I mean, why else would the Census Bureau want to know my telephone number?

Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA.

President Calvin Coolidge: "Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?

The train passed through a series of tunnels. Because the overhead light fixtures had no bulbs in them, some people lit candles inside the tunnels, which dramatically illuminated their black, liquid eyes. There was a solemn, almost devotional cynicism to these eyes, reflecting, as though by a genetic process, all of the horrors witnessed by generation upon generation of forebears.

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.

When we peek behind the grinning mask of comic cynicism, we find a frustrated idealist. The comic sensibility wants the world to be perfect, but when it looks around, it finds greed, corruption, lunacy. The result is an angry and depressed artist. If you doubt that, ask one over for dinner. Every host in Hollywood has made that mistake: "Let's invite some comedy writers to the party! That'll brighten things up." Sure...till the paramedics arrive.

Doubts and cynicism keep most people poor. Rich dad liked to say, "Cynics criticize, and winners analyze." Winners keep their eyes open and see opportunities everyone else missed.