Cynicism Reality Quotes & Sayings

This is some sort of joke, isn't it?" asks Hunt, staring at the flawless blue sky and distant fields.
I cough as lightly and briefly as possible into a handkerchief I have made from a towel borrowed from the inn. "Probably," I say. "But then, what isn't? — Dan Simmons

For a year, Johnny lived the new, brutal truth that he was on his own.
But that's the way it was. What had been concrete one day proved sand the next; strength was illusion; faith meant shit. So what? So his once-bright world had devolved to cold, wet fog. That was life, the new order. Johnny had nothing to trust but himself, so that's the way he rolled - his path, his choices, and no looking back. — John Hart

Depression is seductive: it offends and teases, frightens you and draws you in, tempting you with its promise of sweet oblivion, then overwhelming you with a nearly sexual power, squirming past your defenses, dissolving your will, invading the tired spirit so utterly that it becomes difficult to recall that you ever lived without it ... or to imagine that you might live that way again. With all the guile of Satan himself, depression persuades you that its invasion was all your own idea, that you wanted it all along. It fogs the part of the brain that reasons, that knows right from wrong. It captures you with its warm, guilty, hateful pleasures, and, worst of all, it becomes familiar. All at once, you find yourself in thrall to the very thing that most terrifies you. Your work slides, your friendships slide, your marriage slides, but you scarcely notice: to be depressed is to be half in love with disaster. — Stephen L. Carter

Some people's glasses are half full. I'm the one drinking them.
Some people have forgotten that Pluto is still a planet. I still remember my childhood.
Some people are vegans. I have common sense.
Some people call me Maurice. Some people call me the Gangsta of Love.
Some people just want to live ... but me, I'm the one still alive. — Dave Matthes

The world consists of images on a screen, and consciousness is the steady light that emanates from the projector. — Deepak Chopra

Changes in solar activity have influenced what has been called the "conveyor-belt" circulation of the great Atlantic Ocean currents over the past 240 years. — Willie Soon

It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Cynicism is reality with an alternate spelling. — Woody Allen

Through experience, he had learnt to pick up all of the unmistakable signs of vulnerability in a woman, everything that pointed to her being an easy prey. — Alice Walsh

One simple answer is that there has been a massive rise in the incidence of sanctimony and smugness among the successful that has nothing to do with any change in the underlying reality. Rather, it has been stimulated by politicians who have realized that it is possible to win power by recruiting the most economically successful forty per cent or so of the population in a crusade to roll back the gains made by their fellow citizens in the previous forty years. And how better to rationalize this than to tell people that they deserve the incomes that the market generates? — Brian M. Barry

The only relaxed boss is Big Ron. He had me drinking pink champagne - before the match. — Harry Redknapp

Obviously, the ultimate dream is to be married for life. — Peter Andre

Everyone is a little bitter. We're born bitter. The personality itself is really just a very complex defense mechanism. A reaction to the first time someone said, No you can't. — Marc Maron

If you seem something that is true and do not act then you are wasting your life. And life is too precious. It is all that we have. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I dreamed about the future because that's what people persuade you to do when you're a kid, but that's the biggest lie of all
that you can plan. Reality is, you have no fucking clue what's coming and neither do they. — Tammara Webber

The damaging part of learning to live your life in two parts , whether in reality or fantasy, cannot be underestimated. It is an infectious skill that you learned, one that would eventually spread beyond the bedroom of your life. Life wasn't ever what it seemed on the surface. Nothing could be trusted for what it appeared to be. After all, you weren't what you appeared to be. In learning to hide part of yourself, you lost the ability to trust anything or anyone fully. Without knowing it, you traded humane innocence for dry cynicism. — Alan Downs

Power seldome grows old at Court. — George Herbert

we're a pessimistic bunch. What is more surprising is that, as surveys have found, working-class whites are the most pessimistic group in America. More pessimistic than Latino immigrants, many of whom suffer unthinkable poverty. More pessimistic than black Americans, whose material prospects continue to lag behind those of whites. While reality permits some degree of cynicism, the fact that hillbillies like me are more down about the future than many other groups - some — J.D. Vance

On the brink of sleep I have a gloomy thought: that saving yourself is only pushing yourself even deeper into the trap rather than getting out. Dying is the only way out. — Erri De Luca

People needed proof that Utopia was nothing more than a theory, an illusion read in fictional stories. — Soroosh Shahrivar

But a dream is nothing more than reality shorn of cynicism. — Joseph Girzone

Faith in life, in oneself, in others must be built on the hard rock of realism; that is to say, on the capacity to see evil where it is, to see swindle, destructiveness, and selfishness not only when they are obvious but in their many disguises and rationalizations. Indeed, faith, love, and hope must go together with such a passion for seeing reality in all its nakedness that the outsider would be prone to call the attitude 'cynicism.' And cynical it is, when we mean by it the refusal to be taken in by the sweet and plausible lies that cover almost everything that is said and believed. But this kind of cynicism is not cynicism; it is uncompromisingly critical, a refusal to play the game in a system of deception. — Erich Fromm

I always feel the cynicism is reality with maybe an alternate spelling or something because I feel that I have real perspective on this particular issue of punishment in society. — Woody Allen

I'd always wanted to work in the studio and experiment with sounds. Things that I'm really influenced by and that I love are like The Beatles and Radiohead, and all those records by bands whose music is really involved. — Regina Spektor

Their cynicism was complete and terrible: details, like the lying signs outside the underground chambers of the crematoriums that announced in seven languages, "BATHS," whereas in reality they were gas chambers; the boxes of cyclon gas,5 which were labeled, "POISON: FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF PARASITES," the parasites being, of course, the untold thousands of innocent Jews murdered in the space of a few minutes. Who knows just how far the lie went? — Miklos Nyiszli

Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in western popular culture, but in reality, our cynicism advances the desires of the powerful: cynicism is obedience. — Alex Steffen

The bleakness of what faces us is difficult to swallow. As long as we engage in happy platitudes and a false kind of vision of the possible, it may empower you over the short term, but it is eventually, because of the reality in front of us, going to lead to despair and cynicism and apathy. It's better to swallow hard the bitter pill of what we're up against. — Chris Hedges

Nothing is more urgent than a serious, dare I say compassionate, debate as to where we are going at home and abroad. Technicians cannot master revolutions; every great achievement was an idea before it became a reality. Cathedrals cannot be built by those who are paralyzed by doubt or consumed by cynicism. If a society loses the capacity for great conception, it can be administered but not governed. — Henry A. Kissinger

To me, the whole idea of fame and I think it can be a real test of somebody, of who they are. You know, 'cause some strange things happen. I've seen some peculiar things as far as a person just living their life. — Tobey Maguire

The church seeks to help form people who can risk being peaceful in a violent world, risk being kind in a competitive world, risk being faithful in an age of cynicism, risk being gentle among those who admire the tough, risk love when it may not be returned, because we have the confidence that in Christ we have been reborn into a new reality. — John Howard Yoder

You have to understand something about girls, Mick. You see 'em in the winner's circle, but you'll never find horseshit on their shoes. — Miles Watson

Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq - mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of state-run Arab media and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them. — Victor Davis Hanson

But past service counted for little these days. The world, and those who governed it, moved too quickly to be carrying such burdens as memory and gratitude. — Brian Ruckley

Bless all the women of this world who nurture our heritage while too many man rush off to kill for ideals that might now be deeply and personally held, but will often be viewed as repugnant by later generations. — Stephen Jay Gould

[From Flowering Judas]
She is, her comrades tell her, full of romantic error, for what she defines as cynicism in them is merely 'a developed sense of reality'. — Katherine Anne Porter