Best Cynical Quotes & Sayings

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. — Pete Townshend

Thought for the Week

"Refrain from littering the landscape
with unkind, cynical, mean-spirited words,
and you can return the world to a civility that was lost when human beings began deifying indiscriminant thoughts as if they were the truth."

Leonard Perlmutter (Ram Lev) — Leonard Perlmutter

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

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. — Tariq Ramadan

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. — Richard Rohr

How marvelous it all is! Built not by saints and angels, but the work of men's hands; cemented with men's honest blood and with a world of tears, welded by the best brains of centuries past; not without the taint and reproach incidental to all human work, but constructed on the whole with pure and splendid purpose. Human, and yet not wholly human
for the most heedless and the most cynical must see the finger of the Divine. — Archibald Primrose

The radicals ... want speech regulated by codes that proscribe certain language. They see free speech as at best a delusion, at worst a threat to the welfare of minorities and women ... The most obvious (and cynical) explanation for the switched positions is the switched situations. Protesting students became established professors and administrators. For outsiders, free speech is bread and butter; for insiders, indigestion. To the new academics, unregulated free speech spells trouble. — Russell Jacoby

When emotions turn and stay sour, when thoughts become cynical and judgmental, good and compassionate treatment is on the line. Helpers who become sour and cynical tend to begrudge their high need clients for their neediness. There is a risk that helpers become too well-practiced at taking a bleak view of those they have avowed to assist. There is a temptation to begin to blame clients for their failure to improve. If treatment ends pre-maturely, with either a client never returning to treatment or a helper 'firing' them out of frustration, there is a tendency for the client to take the fall. Of course what we are talking about here are signs of burnout. — Scott E. Spradlin

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

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. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

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

She had always maintained a cynical facade, using it as a defence against embarrassment, fear, loneliness ... but at the moment she felt unusually vulnerable. — Lisa Kleypas

Sorry to be so cynical, but this is New York — David Levithan

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business. — Richard M. Nixon

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

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

The cynical ones are the best companions. But the best of all are the cynical ones when they are still devout; or after; when having been devout, then cynical, they become devout again by cynicism. — Ernest Hemingway,

When you're a child, your best friend in the world is the kid who lives next door. It doesn't occur to you then that this is a matter of arbitrary circumstance. When you grow up you like to imagine that your friendships have a more substantial basis - common interests, like-mindedness, some genuine affinity. It's always a sad revelation that when a good friend acquires a girlfriend or a husband and disappears. You realize that,for them, your friendships was always only a matter of convenience, a fallback, and they simply don't need you anymore. There's nothing especially cynical about this; people are drawn to each other because they're giving each other something they both need, and they drift apart when they aren't getting it or don't need it anymore. Friendship have natural life spans, like love affairs or favorite songs. — Tim Kreider

An incompetent enemy is the best friend you can ever have. — George Bush

Cynical realism - it's the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation — Aldous Huxley

The second point I want to make is that you are right; the boy does indeed have to learn human customs. He must be taught to take off his shoes in a mosque and to wear his hat in a synagogue and to cover his nakedness when taboo requires it, or our tribal shamans will burn him for deviationism. But, child, by the myriad deceptive aspects of Ahriman, don't brainwash him in the process. Make sure he is cynical about each part of it. — Robert A. Heinlein

Sadie was full of crap at the best of times, and in an institution where laxatives were traded like cigarettes in jail, that was really saying something. — James Dawson

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. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Charitable endeavour exalts the prestige and the status of the giver. This may sound unduly cynical but as with all philantrophic activity, it is not easy to unravel the mutually reinforcing motives of selflessness and self-interest. All that can safely be said is that most members of the royal family have difficulty distinguishing between concern about society, concern about the social order and concern about what best to do so they can remain at the top of it. — David Cannadine

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

The Republicans I've been talking to have said, 'Oh, the public is cynical about indictments, they happen so often.' Well, that's whistling past the graveyard, because the average voter is only going to remember that one of the big Republican head honchos in Congress was indicted. They won't remember the name or position, but they'll remember it says Congress is corrupt and maybe the majority party is corrupt. — Larry Sabato

I believe that people, more often than not, act with the best possible intentions. And when they don't, that's funny to me. That's why comedy ends up seeming cynical, because you're talking about the gap between what people say and what they do. — Stephen Colbert

One of the questions I have been asked many times since this story broke is this: Now that the facts are out there, what can we do? My answer, depressing and cynical as it may be, is always the same. Not much. Not now. And certainly not until the American public and its Congressional representatives regain control of the CIA and shred the curtain of secrecy that keeps us from discovering these crimes of state until its too late.
Perhaps when the government officials who presided over these outrages are safely in their crypts, and their apologists and cheerleaders are buried woth them, future historians can finally call these men to account for the miseries they caused. Even if that's all that ever happens, it will be fitting and just, because the favorable judgment of history is ultimately what they craved. — Gary Webb

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. — Beau Willimon

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

A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry. A society in which the capacity for warm appreciation of excellence atrophies will find that its capacity for excellence diminishes. Happiness, too, diminishes as the appreciation of excellence diminishes. That is no small loss, least of all to a nation in which the pursuit of happiness was endorsed in the founding moment. — George F. Will

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. — Peter Drucker

My condolences, you're still alive. — Fakeer Ishavardas

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

ANYONE WHO HAS ever lived or worked in a corrupt dictatorship knows what happens. When the system is rigged, when ordinary citizens are powerless, and when whistle-blowers are pariahs at best, three things happen. First, the worst people rise to the top. They behave appallingly, and they wreak havoc. Second, people who could make productive contributions to society are incented to become destructive, because corruption is far more lucrative than honest work. And third, everyone else pays, both economically and emotionally; people become cynical, selfish, and fatalistic. Often they go along with the system, but they hate themselves for it. They play the game to survive and feed their families, but both they and society suffer. — Charles H. Ferguson

Vision is an idle dream at best and a cynical delusion at worst - but not an achievable end — Peter M. Senge

The only person more cynical than a drunk is a reformed drunk. — James Crumley

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. — John Humphrys

The only color we must be cynical about is never skin color but, the color of character for what character can do, skin color may never be able to do. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

You might have thought that a world such as ours, so hard-nosed and cynical and brash, would have very little time for transcendence, spiritual values of goodness and compassion, gentleness, and caring, but we actually do experience them. — Desmond Tutu

Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss — Helen Fielding

It's easy to be cynical; harder is remembering that on any given day the person beside you on the subway or taking to long to pay for a tub of yogurt at the supermarket could be going through something tremendous and sorrowful and arduous. — Rob Payne

I try and find and access the parts of myself that still blindly believe and have faith in a lot of things. I don't mean to be cynical, but I've also discovered that I still have a lot of those. And they may not be where I expected them to be. Maybe I've been in relationships, and this is a movie about relationships, like romance relationships - so maybe I've been in some that have sort of made me lose my faith. But deep down inside, I still have blind faith. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I know as a critic I'm required to have a well-armored heart. I must be a cynical wise guy to show my great sophistication. No pushover, me. — Roger Ebert

E is betrayed by the cynical sparkle of her eyes, by her sophisticated look. Real ladies do not know the price of things, they like adorable follies; their eyes are like beautiful, hothouse flowers. — Jean-Paul Sartre

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. — Adora Svitak

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 Wilde's books in a bookshop makes me smile. — Orhan Pamuk

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. — Ronald Reagan

Along with faith comes the requirement for dogged persistence. At first meditation may bring you mild highs or some relief from suffering. But there may come a time - just as there does in the development of any skill - when there will be a plateau. You may be bored, discouraged, or even negative and cynical. This is when you will need not only faith, but persistence. — Ram Dass

It is sometimes argued that disbelief in a fearful and tempting heavenly despotism makes life into something arid and tedious and cynical: a mere existence without any consolation or any awareness of the numinous or the transcendent. What nonsense this is. In the first place, it commits an obvious error. It seems to say that we ought not to believe that we are an evolved animal species with faulty components and a short lifespan for ourselves and our globe, lest the consequences of the belief be unwelcome or discreditable to us. Could anything show more clearly the bad effects of wish-thinking? There can be no serious ethical position based on denial or a refusal to look the facts squarely in the face. But this does not mean that we must stare into the abyss all the time. (Only religion, oddly enough, has ever required that we obsessively do that.) — Christopher Hitchens

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

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack. — George S. Patton

Chogyam is spinning, watching the spinning / samsara; If there is no samsara / spinning, there is no Chogyam.
- from the poem Cynical Letter by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche — Trungpa Chogyam

I didn't recognize it as such then, because I was only thirteen years old, but later I found it a bit ironic that my first time seeing a woman in all her form and glory and saggy drug-tainted tits, arrived at the same exact time as my first introduction to death. — Dave Matthes

Let's get drunk," I state, clinking my glass with his.
"Sure you want to do that?" Dorian says with a raised eyebrow. He gives me that look a lot, probably because of all my questionable behavior.
"I'm not sure of anything anymore," I say with a cynical chuckle. "But I know I'm tired of disappointment. And I'm tired of keeping secrets. And I'm tired of fucking things up!"
Dorian nods, understanding my frustration. "Do you want me to help you?" he asks quietly. I know what he means. Dorian is offering to fix me like he did the day before.
"No," I shake my head. "I want you to drink with me. Then I want you to do things to me that are as dirty and immoral as I already feel." I take another hefty gulp and let the searing burn strip away the guilt and shame in my chest.
"Ok, let's get drunk." And with that Dorian downs the entire contents of his glass and turns on the music. — S.L. Jennings

I really became aware of the fact that, oh yeah, whereas a lot of other shows are sort of cynical or jaded or just sort of coming from that sort of energy, our show is very, very about these love-based relationships. It really comes out, a lot of times, in a sweet way. And I think people find that refreshing about our show. That's one of the things I definitely picked up on. — Steve Zissis

alcohol played the midwife — James Branch Cabell

The naively cynical measure a piece of legislation, a victory, a milestone not against the past or the limits of the possible, but against their ideas of perfection... — Rebecca Solnit

Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people. — H.L. Mencken

I'm not cynical. — Laura Schlessinger

Fantasy Is just another synonym for "having-your-own-crazy-world-bcause-the-real-one-is-too-cynical-to-handle-your-craziness". — Aleena Farrukh

Catholics don't believe in divorce. We do believe in murder. There's always Confession, after all.
Brianna Fraser to Roger MacKenzie — Diana Gabaldon

It is cynical to say never trust anyone, but it is realistic to say rarely trust completely. — Ronda Rich

He could be so cynical. So dry and acidic. As blank as a page. Could he be tender, too? — Kelly Creagh