Quotes & Sayings About Being Cynical

Disraeli was now at the height of his fame and popularity. He still had his enemies ... But the people as a whole now admired and respected him deeply ... His unscrupulous past and cynical opportunism were being largely forgotten or forgiven. He was gradually becoming recognized not only as the prophet of a new Conservatism, at once compassionate at home and positive abroad, but as a great statesmen whom the Queen did well to honour. Power had brought responsibility. By 1878 the transformation in public attitudes towards Disraeli was complete. — Christopher Hibbert

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. — Quentin Tarantino

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. — Paul Kagame

I'm not cynical about marriage or romance. I enjoyed being married. And although being single was fun for a while, there was always the risk of dating someone who'd owned a lunch box with my picture on it. — Shaun Cassidy

This was a different Sally than Jo had first been presented with: the one with the carefully pencilled lips and brows, the modern Marlene Dietrich. With her make-up on, Sally could pass for being still in her twenties, perhaps only a little older than Jo. At a generous guess, she was about five and a half feet tall - if you counted her customary six-inch heels. But now, without her make-up and stilettos, Sally looked small, thin-lipped, and cynical. Jo decided that she liked this Sally better. — Elle Wild

Others take a more cynical view, believing that the Cypriots have little inclination to reach a solution as they actually rather enjoy the international attention they receive. As George Mikes, a Hungarian wit, once famously, if rather unfairly, put it, 'Realizing they will never be a world power, the Cypriots have decided to settle for being a world nuisance'. — James Ker-Lindsay

Alice, winning means manipulation. It means taking people - people who may have helped you in the past, even people you care about - and using them without hesitation or regret. It means making decisions that would be viewed by any normal-thinking human being as cynical at best and dishonorable at worst — Elle Lothlorien

Listen, Samuel, really, voice of experience here? It's a terrible burden, being idealistic. It discolors everything you'll do later. It will haunt you constantly for all time as you become the inevitably cynical person the world requires you to be. Just give up on it now, the idealism, doing the right thing. Then you'll have nothing to regret later." "Thanks. I'll be in touch. — Nathan Hill

I'm getting old, thought Eileen Calder. Old and worn out and cynical. And being cynical is a lot worse than being old or worn out. — Charles Sheffield

Having her in my arms feels like coming home. I am not one to believe in all that love at first sight bullshit, but even as cynical as I am, I can recognize something bigger than lust at work. My body wants her; that is no secret, but the level of want is borderline craving. I need her. Needing someone is not something I am used to. No, I am used to being needed ... something this woman clearly doesn't want. — Harper Sloan

We know that our world is corrupt and diseased but we're tired of being cynical and feeling helpless. What the hell, tilt at a windmill. — Cynthia Heimel

Americans are suffering so much from being in unrewarding environments that it has made us very cynical. I think that American suburbia has become a powerful generator of anxiety and depression. — James Howard Kunstler

From being a dream, dams have become a very cynical corrupt enterprise; a way of letting governments lay their hands on huge sums of money; a way of centralizing resources; a way of snatching rivers away from the poor and giving them to the rich. And so in a sense they've become monuments to corruption. — Arundhati Roy

Just as no sane farmer would express disappointment because his cow did not lay eggs or hope that his cow might be induced to lay eggs, an intelligent observer should be expected to refrain from critical or hortatory discussion of the functional capacity of the United Nations that is uninformed by an accurate understanding of the realistic possibilities. We have no warrant for being hopeful, disillusioned, cynical, or fearful of the United Nations, unless the expectations that enter into our judgment bear some sensible relationship to the nature of the organization and the limitations set by the political context within which it operates. — Inis L. Claude Jr.

It is realistic rather than cynical to observe that in a fallen world there are degrees of virtue in relation to what is right, and good and just. These are important in our human judgments of others, even though they may be blown to the winds by the grace of God. To "do good because we know it is good" is different from "doing good only because we know we are seen," and this in turn is different from "doing good only because we are afraid of being thought to be bad," which in turn is different again from "the complete abandonment of any pretense of caring about being good or being seen." The first type of action springs from what we call morality, the second respectability, the third hypocrisy, and the fourth sheer wickedness. This — Os Guinness

I think that if a person doesn't feel cynical then they're out of phase with the 20th century. Being cynical is the only way to deal with modern civilization - you can't just swallow it whole. — Frank Zappa

The truth is that life will break us and burn us at some point on the journey. This is not pessimistic or cynical but descriptive of the geography of being alive. It is part of how we are transformed by the journey. Yet when we're broken or burned by events, we feel betrayed by God. When we're broken or burned by people, we feel betrayed by other souls. — Mark Nepo

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

There just isn't enough cock in this world to be caught suckin' and be called anything but a slut for life. The cynic in me would call it a bad habit, but that'd make me a whore in denial and if there's one thing I am, it's an honest bitch. Then again, you don't get famous for being daddy's little angel, but you can easily fall into the Infamy Bracket by preaching a made-up Bible quote now and again. They say I'm shallow, but I've made a living out off diving off the deep end. — Dave Matthes

The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the remainder of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat overlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped strap a rush basket, from which protruded at one end the crutch of a hay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture. His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical indifference personal to himself, showing its presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in the right, as he paced along. — Thomas Hardy

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. — Erica Jong

I don't see myself as I really am. The reason is because I have blind spots. My past is full of experiences that are influencing my present and my future. These past experiences have given birth to fear and insecurity, which create huge blind spots. The past has also given birth to a thousand hopes, dreams, and ambitions that I carry deep within me, and these also prevent me from seeing myself as I really am. At times I can be cynical because of something or someone I encountered in the past, and this cynicism is a blind spot. I can also be paranoid at times - another blind spot. And guess what - I like being liked, and nothing will blind us like our desire to be liked, accepted, loved. All of these blind spots make it hard for me to see situations and people (especially myself) as they really are. — Matthew Kelly

You can't blame anyone for being cynical about politicians. — Peter Capaldi

Marines have a cynical approach to war. They believe in three things; liberty, payday and that when two Marines are together in a fight, one is being wasted. Being a minority group militarily, they are proud and sensitive in their dealings with other military organizations. A Marine's concept of a perfect battle is to have other Marines on the right and left flanks, Marine aircraft overhead and Marine artillery and naval gunfire backing them up. — Ernie Pyle

Canadians are tired of being cynical. — Justin Trudeau

Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things they didn't know about. "Yes," he agreed with — Douglas Adams

Good gracious, she could have remained faithful to him in spirit while she was being unfaithful to him in the flesh. That is a feat of legerdemain that women find it easy to accomplish.'
What a odious cynic you are.'
If it's cynical to look truth in the face and exercise common sense in the affairs of life, then certainly I'm a cynic and odious if you like.'
[Virtue] — W. Somerset Maugham

I learned to stop being English about things like love. If you make a film in England about love, it's hugely complicated. It's all about saying what the weather is like, and you're secretly telling someone you love them. You know what the English are like; they're very repressed people. You don't get that in India. India is incredibly un-cynical about love. It's a not a complicated thing. It's me, you, love. Let's go. — Simon Beaufoy

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. — Josh Radnor

It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film. — John Boorman

We do not smirk at the misery or the merrymaking of immoral culture. We weep. Being pilgrims does not mean being cynical. The salt of the earth does not mock rotting meat. Where it can, it saves and seasons. And where it can't, it weeps. — John Piper

So a new element darkled in their already darkling mood: a somber, deep-rooted bitterness which would grow and grow until it would make of them - those who survived - the tough, mean, totally cynical infantry fighters which their leaders fondly on sentimental grounds already believed they were, and which all of them, everybody, hated the Japanese for being. — James Jones

On first impressions, John seemed more cynical and brash than the others, Ringo the most endearing, Paul was cute, and George, with velvet brown eyes and dark chestnut hair, was the best-looking man I'd ever seen. At the break for lunch I found myself sitting next to him, whether by accident or design I have never been sure. We were both shy and spoke hardly a word to each other, but being close to him was electrifying. — Pattie Boyd

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. — Peter Drucker

Her other paramour was a student at the UASD
one of those City College types who's been in school eleven years and is always five credits shy of a degree. Students today don't mean na; but in Latin America whipped into a frenzy by the fall of Arbenz, by the stoning of Nixon, by the Guerillas of the Sierra Madre, by the endless cynical maneuverings of the Yankee Pig Dogs
in a Latin America already a year and a half into the Decade of Guerilla
a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe. Such a student was Arquimedes. He also listened to the shortwave, but not for Dodgers scores; what he risked his life for was the news leaking out of Havana, news of the future. Arquemides was, therefore, a student, the son of a Zapatero and a midwife, a tirapiedra and a quemagoma for life. Being a student wasn't a joke, not with Trujillo and Johnny Abbes scooping up everybody following the foiled Cuban Invasion of 1959. — Junot Diaz

I'm not being cynical but when you're doing a movie you have a number to choices to do as an actor. But then you see it all cut together and some of the little ... all those little precious pieces you put in maybe on the cutting room floor. So you don't have that much control. You have very little control, in fact. — Anthony Hopkins

In a cruel and evil world, being cynical can allow you to get some entertainment out of it. — Daniel Waters

It's kind of depressing, if you think about it. I mean, me being so young, and yet so cynical and suspicious. — Meg Cabot

These were the Sophists, and their interest was in teaching the use of argumentative skills of the sort previous philosophers had exhibited, but as a means of attaining worldly success, for instance in politics. Unfortunately, they gained a reputation for being rather cynical and unscrupulous in their argumentative standards: any old argument would do as long as it persuaded one's listener, even if it was totally fallacious; what mattered was winning the debate, not arriving at the truth, and the line between logic and rhetoric was thus blurred. (The Sophists are still with us. Today we call them "lawyers," "professors of literary criticism," and "Michael Moore.") — Edward Feser

When people call me Sir Anthony I just think oh, that's a bit odd. But I'm not cynical about it. Um, I just feel more comfortable being called Tony or Mr. Hopkins, whatever name I'm called. — Anthony Hopkins

I have to stop being young. I have to get jaded. I have to be cynical. I have to stop speaking. I have to be invisible. He likes things that don't really exist. — Sarahbeth Purcell

I had been poor myself, and knew what awaited him in the world. He would find that they who fawned on him most would be first to turn their backs on him now. He would be rudely disillusioned regarding the fables of love and friendship, and would become cynical, bitter, and sceptical of there being any disinterested good in human nature. — Miles Franklin

Being just a little cynical will make you a much safer optimist. — Lisa Kleypas

This notion that's peddled by the religious right - that they are oppressed is not true. Sometimes it's a cynical ploy to move their agenda ahead. The classic example being that somehow secularists are trying to eliminate Christmas, which strikes me as some kind of manufactured controversy. — Barack Obama

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness? — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

People have different ideas, emotional ideas, of what certain words mean, and they think of irony as something that's more associated with being cynical-it's kind of a put-down. — Jeff Koons

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

A generation of reporters saw the Washington Post win a Pulitzer for exposing the scandal, and many dreamed of being the next Woodward or Bernstein. A strong and skeptical press corps is good for democracy. Often the media's first instinct is to portray every story as a scandal, however, which presents a distorted picture of government and leaves the public cynical. — George W. Bush

The reason we feel alienated is because the society is infantile, trivial, and stupid. So the cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation. I grapple with this because I'm a parent. And I think anybody who has children, you come to this realization, you know - what'll it be? Alienated, cynical intellectual? Or slack-jawed, half-wit consumer of the horseshit being handed down from on high? There is not much choice in there, you see. And we all want our children to be well adjusted; unfortunately, there's nothing to be well adjusted to! — Terence McKenna

She discovered what others know only too well in a cynical way, that people prefer to believe in and worship a god who is remote rather than live out the godlike nature which is their inherent being. — Henry Miller

There is, in the early period of love, a measure of sheer relief at being able, at last, to reveal so much of what needed to be kept hidden for the sake of propriety. We can admit to not being as respectable or as sober, as even-keeled, or as "normal" as society believes. We can be childish, imaginative, wild, hopeful, cynical, fragile, and multiple; all of this our lover can understand and accept us for. At — Alain De Botton

If you genuinely believe that only the death of a loved one can motivate a human being to take up a cause ... then get your pathetic, cynical ass out of my way so I can do my job! — Mark Waid

***A SMALL SUGGESTION***
Or maybe there was a woman on Grande Strasse who now kept her library window open for another reason - but that's just be being cynical, or hopeful. Or both. — Markus Zusak

Some people say that true love is a myth, that soulmates don't exist. I feel sadness for those cynical souls. They'll never know the high that comes from being with the one you're meant to be with. They'll never experience the absolute rightness of finding their true mate. — E.K. Blair

Indeed, some cynical liberals have even questioned the sincerity of pro-life advocates as not really being in favor of "life" as an absolute, since they support the death penalty. Other liberals have questioned the morality of pro-life advocates who want to save the lives of some unborn babies (those who would be aborted) and not save the lives of other unborn babies (the great many who die of inadequate pre-and postnatal care). To a liberal, it is both illogical and immoral for someone to want to save the life of an unborn baby whose mother does not want it, but not to want to save the life of a baby whose mother does want it. I — George Lakoff

Sure, I'm dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But, in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself. — Sylvia Plath

Wintervale, by being so open, trusting, and artless his entire life, had made his more cynical friends hang on to their secrets. And in doing so, they had preserved themselves from the Bane. — Sherry Thomas

I made a decision a long time ago that I was going to choose joy. I even painted a big rectangle on my wall and printed it in big letters so I wouldn't forget to make that choice every day. The major word in that rectangle isn't joy, it's CHOOSE. It's looking around me when life is difficult and trading every complaint I have for something beautiful in my life that far outweighs it. I know, it's that Pollyanna personified thing again, but living joyful beats being cynical any day of the week. — Jessica N. Turner

People can get blinded by a sense of being comfortable or feeling secure, but that's quite a cynical point of view. — Joshua James Alphonse Franceschi

We are doing one of two things when we sing to our children. We are either indulging in a cynical duplicity that is only creating the conditions for disenchantment, or we are passing on to them, as we had passed on to us, something that the human imagination has sanctioned as being in some way perennially valid. — Thomas Howard

I am very optimistic about the long run prospects for democracy in China. Chinese society is being dramatically and rapidly transformed. And there's rising evidence that the new generation not only lacks faith in communism anymore, they think it's a joke. They're very cynical about their leadership and they want democratic change. — Larry Diamond

Every one of us every day has choices to make about the kind of person we are and what we wish to become. You can decide to be someone who brings people together, or you can fall prey to those who wish to divide us. You can be someone who educates yourself, or you can believe that being negative is clever and being cynical is fashionable. You have a choice. — Hillary Clinton

Being cynical isn't necessarily being negative or bitter. It's a person who is wary of mistaking love for something that it's not and getting their heart broken. — Charlyne Yi

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. — Penn Jillette

It's an interesting thing that we have not copyrighted our ideas about liberty or tried to charge others to use them, or even to credit us when they do so. We've given these ideas away freely. To what end? We have not calculated the benefit to ourselves much. Some have said that we do what we do for purely selfish or mercenary reasons, that we fought in Iraq, for example, because of our oil interests. Such views are not only deeply cynical but also fail to account for much else that we do. Are we being self-serving in what we've done in Africa to combat AIDS? Are we being self-serving in sending ships and supplies to disaster areas around the world? Unless we are hopelessly bound by cynicism, we have to acknowledge that the United States has been remarkably and consistently generous in sharing what it has, whether material things or ideas. — Eric Metaxas

To be cynical is to be distant. While offering a false intimacy of being "in the know," cynicism actually destroys intimacy. It leads to a creeping bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit ...
A praying life is just the opposite. It engaged evil. It doesn't take no for an answer. The psalmist was in God's face, hoping, dreaming, asking. Prayer is feisty. Cynicism, on the other hand, merely critiques. It is passive, cocooning itself from the passions of the great cosmic battle we are engaged in. It is without hope. — Paul E. Miller

I oscillate between being cynical and being naive on a regular basis. I always think that not much shocks me until something much too obvious does. — Rabih Alameddine

Being unhappy alone isn't all that much fun, but what's even tougher is playing one's part without forgetting one's lines, coping with other people's compassion, their comments, being there with the right line when they give the cue. — Francois Maspero

It's what passes for wisdom, being ironic and cynical. — Barack Obama

Music - good music, great music - had a hard, irreducible purity to it. It might be bitter and despairing and pessimistic, but it could never be cynical. If music is tragic, those with asses' ears accuse it of being cynical. But when a composer is bitter, or in despair, or pessimistic, that still means he believes in something. — Julian Barnes

And of course, the deepest irony about the young being cynical is that they are the ones that need to move, and dance, and trust the most. — Caitlin Moran

The woman who is not pursued sets up the doctrine that pursuit is offensive to her sex, and wants to make it a felony. No genuinely attractive woman has any such desire. She likes masculine admiration, however violently expressed, and is quite able to take care of herself. More, she is well aware that very few men are bold enough to offer it without a plain invitation, and this awareness makes her extremely cynical of all women who complain of being harassed, beset, storied, and seduced. All the more intelligent women that I know, indeed, are unanimously of the opinion that no girl in her right senses has ever been actually seduced since the world began; — H.L. Mencken

I happen to disagree with the well-entrenched theory that the art of conversation is merely the art of being a good listener. Such advice invites people to be cynical with one another and full of fake; when a conversation becomes a monologue, poked along with tiny cattle-prod questions, it isn't a conversation any more. — Barbara Walters

I was going to stop being so cynical but probably nobody would even notice. — Jack Barker

When you have to work with and exist amongst cynical, burned-out personnel on a set, it doesn't matter what you're shooting or how much you're being paid - it's not worth it. — Henry Rollins

The French delegates now wore a cynical smile as they argued before the commissions; they had their assurance that their armies were going to hold the Rhineland and the Sarre, and that a series of buffer states were to be set up between Germany and Russia, all owing their existence to France, all financed with the savings of the French peasants, and munitioned by Zaharoff, alias Schneider-Creusot. France and Britain were going to divide Persia and Mesopotamia and Syria and make a deal for the oil and the laying of pipelines. Italy was to take the Adriatic, Japan was to take Shantung - all such matters were being settled among sensible men. Lanny — Upton Sinclair

they were really having fun being cynical, and I didn't want to ruin it. — Stephen Chbosky

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. — Kurt Vonnegut

It would be a sad day if we British stopped being cynical, but you sometimes wonder whether we overdo it. — Boris Johnson

It's exhausting being cynical. You are trying to be an immovable, angry rock in the middle of a stream. But the stream will not move. It is you that will be worn down to dull silt. — Caitlin Moran

I think Kennedy being assassinated changed the world. That shot changed everything about America, and made us cynical, made people discontent and angry. — Robert Osborne