Cynical Quotations | Page 4

I think that Goldman Sachs and the Pentagon determine more of America's outcome then any president or any congress, that sounds a bit cynical, but I think I am right.

Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.

The EU has become pretty cynical about sanctions. That is partly because there are so many important economic interests at stake. But it is also because the EU is not convinced by the idea that sanctions can bring about real change.

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.

Valentine's Day purely commercial, cynical enterprise, anyway. Matter of supreme indifference to me.

I'm sure some cynical people would point to that as the main reason for doing it for a lot of people.

If you're constantly stepping outside of the character and judging them, you'll never really be able to fully engage because you'll always be slightly cynical.

The good television of today is probably better than the best television of the old days. The bad television of today is worse. It is not only bad, it is damaging, meretricious, seedy and cynical.

Walt had a marvelous intuition. And because he understood people very well, liked them and had great respect for people, there was nothing cynical about Walt.

Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.

For me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.

We have never done anything in a cynical fake way

Over the years, during television interviews, whenever the host or the reviewer or whoever gets cynical and nasty with me, I will behave accordingly. I will defend myself.

The business world worships mediocrity. Officially we revere free enterprise, initiative and individuality. Unofficially we fear it.

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.

It's so much easier to be cynical.

If they lost the incredible conviction that they can change their wives or husbands, marriage would collapse at once.

I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it.

I do not want to be cynical, but if developing nations are kept backward by being told, again and again, you belong to the poor and you are there, where you actually belong, then nothing will change.

Prison is a crash course in the darker side of life. Few survive it without becoming a different person: more cynical, jaded, fearful, angry. Its hard to trust again, hard to believe, easy to hate a system that destroyed your life behind the pompous pretense of saving you from yourself, for your own good.

The Who is now a brand, not a band; but it is a brand that is upheld by its audience, not an industry or a cynical moneymaking machine.

There is no other genre that deals with America better, in a subtextual way, than the Westerns being made in the different decades. The '50s Westerns very much put forth an Eisenhower idea of America, whereas the Westerns of the '70s were very cynical about America.

Only in Washington would death be considered a taxable event. [a cynical but perhaps fair assessment]

The closer we are to God, to divine attributes - such as absolute truth, goodness, and beauty - the more we wonder. When we separate ourselves from truth, goodness, and beauty, we lose wonder and become cynical. The Enlightenment was basically the narrowing of our vision to a purely scientific, empirical, rationalistic worldview, screwing down the manhole covers on us so we became squinting underground creatures.

I've become less cynical, which is appalling but kind of cool.

No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up.

I try to be cynical, but it's so hard to keep up.

Every day I read the newspapers, and no matter how cynical I get, it's imposssible to keep up.

The wise man tests before he talks. The critic but follows the fad of a cynical and apathetic age.

We can be negative and cynical or we can be charged and hot wored to find a way through it, over it, around it under it.

I think we sort of are all fans of love really, if you're not then you're too cynical aren't you?

What is love but a second-hand emotion?

The Cold War was waged in a particularly brutal and cynical way in Africa, and Africa seemed powerless to do anything to stop it.

What a liberal really wants is to bring about change that will not in any way endanger his position.

My friends are so cynical, they refuse to keep the faith.

You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.

People tend to become cynical about even the most appalling crisis if it seems to be dragging on, failing to come to term.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing 'we' can do -- but who is that 'we'? -- and nothing 'they' can do either -- and who are 'they' -- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted - made cynical, superficial - by this understanding.

We muckraked, not because we hated our world, but because we loved it. We were not hopeless, we were not cynical, we were not bitter.

No one more cynical than an idealist.

My heart was closed. Cold. I was self-conscious and cynical.

I felt wise and cynical as all hell.

Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool.

IS [Islamic State] has played a major role in helping Bashar al-Assad to reposition Syria on the international scene. Now, it is almost impossible to come up with a solution that would exclude him. The political game appears to be very cynical indeed.

A cynical plan has been launched in Ukraine to destroy this administration

You have to be 100% behind someone, before you can stab them in the back.

There is nothing more I should do to it now, and therefore I am not likely to be more ready to go than at this moment.

The biggest mistake of my life was taking a military education.

Despite his cynical exterior, he had a good heart-and Lissa owned most of it.

I think that if there are problems in journalism they're created by journalists... the trivialisation of the news and the sort of snyed, cynical allowance of untruth to be in a newspaper because it might be titillating.

I like threesomes with two women, not because I'm a cynical sexual predator. Oh no! But because I'm a romantic. I'm looking for "The One." And I'll find her more quickly if I audition two at a time.

As you get older, you just lose that confidence and narcissism you have in your twenties. You realize you have less time on the planet, and you become cynical and less confident.

I'm the most cynical person, and I know what that sounds like when you say, I don't drink and drive, and I don't. But I know people look at that with skepticism, and I understand.

I never thought I'd spend all my life with Gary. I suppose I was quite cynical about marriage. But with Jude, I knew right from the beginning: there was an electricity I'd never felt before. It was so easy, we talked for hours. It was a relief, really.

At no time do I come from a cynical point of view. I'm coming from a concerned point of view.

Acting is something that I've done since I was so young. I always felt - certainly as a teenager - really cynical about acting. I definitely didn't feel like it was something I wanted to do, and so I really took it for granted.

The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.

We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy's side of the front is always propaganda and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.

Pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things that we carry with us, they're the things that make us what we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away, I need my pain!

I'm not cynical when it comes to things that are important. I'm cynical about pop culture and all that horseshit.

No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman.

Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.

When people get cynical about love, they should look at us [Yoko and John Lennon] and see it is possible

Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.

The world is now multicultural the same way the world is round. It's not a selling point, it's not a 'quirky' feature, it's not a cynical marketing ploy, it's not an artistic statement, it's not even a plot device. It's a fact, like seedless grapes.

Bob Dylan was again an entirely new person - this time old, craggy, cynical, and world-weary, as in "Not Dark Yet".

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!'

An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.

Justice is the sanction of established injustice.

Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.

Vietnam was an exercise in mistaken idealism; Iraq in cynical money-making. And there's no optimism or idealism now -- Americans are tired of knowledge. Our leaders, the C-students from Yale, know this. We're proud of being ignorant; that leaves virtue at our core. We aren't frazzled by knowledge like foreigners, so we can be trusted.

What is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one?.

I'm a cynical idealist.

The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.

I don't seem to be cynical to myself but how what I say goes down with others is their problem. I'm realistic.

Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.

Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.

The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion.

There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.

We should take heart from our own experience and performance. In a cynical world we have become an inspiration to many.

There's nothing more oily and cynical in politics than telling the truth.

Now majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But like other precious, sacred things .... it's not only worth dying for; it can make you wish you were dead. Imagine if all life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza.

I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing.

Capitalism is being attacked not because it is inefficient or misgoverned but because it is cynical. And indeed a society based on the assertion that private vices become public benefits cannot endure, no matter how impeccable its logic, no matter how great its benefits.

The young knowledge worker whose job is too small to challenge and test his abilities either leaves or declines rapidly into premature middle age, soured, cynical, unproductive.

One of the saddest things in the world is to see a cynical young person.

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.

It will never be possible for any length of time for any group of the American people, either by reason of wealth or learning or inheritance or economic power, to retain any mandate, any permanent authority to arrogate to itself the political control of American public life.

Hatred is a very underestimated emotion.

I'm cynical about society, politics, newspapers, government. But I'm not cynical about life, love, goodness, death. That's why I really don't want to be labeled a cynic.

Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight.

I think the major problem in growing up is to become sophisticated without becoming cynical.

Don't give up on your ideals. Don't compromise. Don't turn to expediency. And for heaven's sake . . . don't get cynical.

The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself.

Law and freedom must be indivisible partners. For without law, there can be no freedom, only choas and disorder; and without freedom, law is but a cynical veneer for injustice and oppression.

Smile first thing in the morning. Get it over with.

Songwriters might write cynical, world-wise lyrics and constantly talk about money, but most of us are downright naive when it comes to business.