Cynical Quotations

Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.

It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

I don't mock things, which makes me more vulnerable to mockery myself. If you're cynical, you're protected from mockery. But I have to be nice. I don't think I have irony. A sense of humour, yes, but not irony.

Amongst my friends, I am known as the most cynical person they know - I'm incredibly cynical. I don't believe in God, I don't believe in the supernatural, I don't believe in anything! And I'm terribly cynical, and somehow or other, all three of my films and much of my television work has been rather sentimental, and 'heartwarming'.

As we get older - perhaps I'm just speaking for myself - we can get too cynical.

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.

Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don't swallow it.

Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founder's than any other agency in the world.

Because I was from the Midwest and untrained, I was completely open and ready to try anything. Many of my classmates were cynical and jaded; some already had conservatory training, and they were there simply to get that Yale stamp of approval, which they saw as a career stepping-stone.

I'm not cynical or bitter in any way. Life's too short; you get ripped off, but if you hold a grudge, it's going to affect you. You take it on the chin, you learn, you try not to make the same mistakes.

If I never saw another airport again, I'd be happy!

I think I've finally proven something to people who were cynical about me. Because they were cruel.

We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.

Multiculturalism may well be our saviour, wresting us out from the straitjacket of our history, thrusting the old continent into an environment where other ethnicities, less cynical and more positive, will play a big role in its future.

All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.

In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious.

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.

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.

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.

I'm disenchanted with Communism and most other things. I'm cynical but not a cynic. I'm cynical about TV, Congress, and commercial peanut butter.

The more cynical you become, the better off you'll be.

The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.

I'm a bit cynical that it ever will be addressed properly. I think it is healthy to get some sort of copyright protection. But some of it has gone on forever.

Just try to be happy. Unhappiness starts with wanting to be happier.

Avoid cynical and negative people like the plague. They are killers of potential.

We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse.

The Ides of March was a fairly cynical film.

What I'm trying to do is deliver results, not promises; results, not vision; results, not concepts. The world is cynical about IBM's promises.

I think the word 'earnest' kind of has a negative connotation on some level. I think one of the things that's happened is that being cynical is somehow conflated with being sophisticated. I think that's problematic, to say the least.

I am a positive person. I am not cynical. If you are born in this world, no matter who you are, negative things will happen. If you aren't positive as a person, you'll be very unhappy. It's extremely important to be positive, to laugh, to be happy, to accept life as it comes.

We cannot consume our way into personal growth. Yet, millions of us have bought into this cynical concept of faux identity.

It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.

I'm rather cynical about the way the honours system is used, frankly. A whole lot of the honours system is used for political purposes by the government in power.

Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wildes books in a bookshop makes me smile.

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

In the early 1990s we witnessed the emergence of a revitalized contemporary Chinese art world that began as a reaction against the government-approved Social Realist style. Zhang Xiaogang, Huang Yong Ping, Ai WeiWei, Yue Minjun, and Wang Guangyi were among the first group of artists to establish a movement that became known as Cynical Realism.

Politics has come to resemble a cynical team game played by politicians, while the public has been pushed aside as if sitting on the seats of a stadium in which passion for politics is gradually making room for blindness and desperation.

Cannes is a very strange place. I tried to show up as best I could and to try not to be cynical.

I think you can be cynical about religion on occasion, and certainly skeptical about the degree to which some people use religion to manipulate other people.

I don't think something necessarily has to be mean or cynical to represent 'edgy.' I think 'edgy' can mean a lot of different things.

I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest.

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.

I don't see myself as a stand-up comic doing cynical, mean-spirited or disrespectful stuff. I'm very aware that I don't like to disrespect people too much.

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.

I don't know many South Africans who don't have their eyes wide open to what it's like to be exposed to some sort of violence. The question is whether we choose to be cynical about it or not.

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.

You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today.

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.

The world is cynical and sarcastic, but that doesn't mean that that's always the truth.

Ineptitude and negligence directed British policies in India more than any cynical desire to divide and rule, but the British were not above exploiting rivalries.

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.

I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.

I've actually always wanted to write like a one-person show that was sort of a romantic comedy - a show that was kind of cynical about romance and marriage but ultimately embraced it. Because I feel like comedy is always cynical, inherently, because it's contrarian.

A comedian's a comedian. They're a very kind of cynical bunch. I guess that's why I like them.

Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.

I think if you're a regular viewer of Fox News, you're among the most cynical people on planet Earth. I cannot think of a more cynical slogan than 'Fair and Balanced.'

You've got to be strong enough for love. It's very easy to be cool and cynical. It's very difficult to just let yourself go and be in love. You've got to be strong enough for that.

I think the future also will not belong to those who are cynical or those who stand on the sidelines

The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people.

Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.

I do get cynical, but what can you do? It doesn't make any difference.

I am cynical about politicians. My experience of politicians has been thoroughly negative. I have found that politicians are people that can not be taken at face value. There are very few politicians I have been impressed with.

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.

I was never a liberal. I was radical. I was cynical. I was negative. But, I was never a liberal. I always saw that as too lukewarm for me.

Yeah, it's pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

As human beings we're so cynical, so uncompassionate.

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.

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.

It's an indication of how cynical our society has become that any kind of love story with a sad theme is automatically ridiculed as sentimental junk.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed, in the face of every constitutional convention, only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

The way I see politics is, I don't think it's cynical to accept the fact politicians are human beings, that they're flawed, and they represent the best and the worst of us.

I've gotten very cynical and kind of anhedonic about all the things I have to do to get to do comedy: all the travel, hotels, and airports.

Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes.

Making love in the morning got me through morning sickness. I found I could be happy and throw up at the same time.

It is time to let America be America again. To return freedom to the people. To stand on our founding principles and reject the cynical politics of the Nanny State.

Americans are cool; if you show just a chink of vulnerability, they respond so much. They'll pat you on the arm and say, 'Hey kid, you're all right.' Brits will respond but they are much more cynical.

I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but probably not... I was a really cynical child.

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.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

I don't think I'm against all wars, but you'd have to have a damn good reason to send your son or daughter to fight, or to go yourself. So often, we are lied to and manipulated by our governments for their own very cynical reasons.

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.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

I felt slightly superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I became quite cynical talking to my student friends.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

If I'm breathing in 2016, I'll be happy.

People like Bill Maher, who brags about being a cynic, it sickens me. I am the least cynical person I know, and I am very, very skeptical.

The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

It's so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.