Quotes About Cynicism

True cynics kill themselves. The rest are posers, trying to use clever sarcasm and snarky remarks to hide insecurity and the fear that if they put themselves out there, they will fail.

Both religions and musicals work best with energetic and committed believers. Cynicism or detachment would have destroyed the magic - something true of religion, too.

People think it's easy to be cynical and pessimistic, but it's incredibly hard work. It's much easier to be hopeful.

The more people that are out of work, the better for the Democrat Party. I know you might snicker at that, but it's the damn truth.

Most horror films are made very cynically, and they're usually made by studios for an audience that they know is there, no matter what they put out. And there are always exceptions - every year, it seems we have a great one coming out.

I don't think you can ever be ahead of your time with cynicism about that subject. No, I don't think it was ahead of its time. I think it was very much a product of its time.

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence.

Don't believe everything you hear.Real eyes,realize,real lies.

Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.

I may sound very cynical, but a cynic is really a realist.

One is inclined to add only one emollient sentence: that whoever you are and whatever you have done, you will be reversed if you reach old age, for then you will look like a hard old walnut or like some beatified infant of boundless cynicism – the London ideas of innocence. You will look so sweet that you will be able to get away with anything.

Between 1914 and 1919 young men and women, disastrously pure in heart and unsuspicious of elderly self-interest and cynical exploitation, were continually re-dedicating themselves - as I did that morning in Boulogne - to an end that they believed, and went on trying to believe, lofty and ideal.

Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning.

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

Two things you should know about me; The first is that I am deeply suspicious of people in general. It is my nature to expect the worst of them. And the second is that I am unexpectedly good with computers.

Terrorism and greed were the watchwords of my time. The world had learned to be cynical.

Prinn lived by one governing thought: Whenever life seems to be going surprisingly well, just wait ten seconds and everything will go back to shit like normal.

Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.

I'm a mad lover of sport. You cannot say a bad word to me about sports. So I know business is involved and I know it can be cynical, and, of course, I watch it, but for me it's pure.

The danger of total propaganda is not that propaganda will be believed. The danger is that nothing will be believed and that every communication becomes suspect. In the end, no communication is being recieved anymore. Everything anyone says is considered a demand and is resisted, resented, and in effect not heard at all. The end results of total propaganda are not fanatics, but cynics - but this, of course, may be even greater and more dangerous corruption. (p. 20)

It's always instructive to observe the life cycle of the First World aid worker. A wary enthusiasm blooms into an almost messianic sense of what might be possible. Then, as they bump up against the local cultural limits of acceptable change, comes the inevitable disappointment, which can harden into cynicism and even racism, until they are no better than the resident whites they have initially disparaged.

It is a testament to our naïveté about culture that we think that we can change it by simply declaring new values. Such declarations usually produce only cynicism.

They're not idealists like Joe and me; they're cynics with utter faith. It's a sort of brain defect, like a lobotomy—that

This guy—Joe whatever—hasn't even got the right expression on his face; he should have that cold but somehow enthusiastic look, as if he believed in nothing and yet somehow had absolute faith. Yes, that's how they are. They're not idealists like Joe and me; they're cynics with utter faith.