What Is A Cynic Quotes & Sayings

Scratch a cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist. — Jon F. Merz

I just have a different impression of the human race. I think we're really resilient. I think there are a lot of cynical people out there right now, and probably for good reason. But I think that ever cynic is really a damaged romantic, and they really, really, really want things to be good. And if that's the case, I don't need to tell a story that says, "Humanity, look what you've done. Now you can't go out. There's no sun. Look how you've wrecked the world." That's not me. That's not my job. — J.H. Wyman

Mitch's take on humanity had deteriorated to the point where he assumed someone was lying if her lips were moving. — Jennifer Crusie

Western teaching institutions that refuse to acknowledge today's taboos are by definition subversive. Tell the new zealots of Washington that in the making of Israel a monstrous human crime was committed and they will call you an anti-Semite. Tell them there was no Garden of Creation and they will call you a dangerous cynic. Tell them God is what man invented to compensate for his ignorance of science and they will call you a Communist. — John Le Carre

But the poetry of that kiss, the wonder of it, the magic that there was in life for hours after it--who can describe that? It is so easy for an Englishman to sneer at these chance collisions of human beings. To the insular cynic and the insular moralist they offer an equal opportunity. It is so easy to talk of "passing emotion," and how to forget how vivid the emotion was ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at root a good one. We recognize that emotion is not enough, and that men and women are personalities capable of sustained relations, not mere opportunities for an electrical discharge. Yet we rate the impulse too highly. We do not admit that by collisions of this trivial sort the doors of heaven may be shaken open. — E. M. Forster

Scratch the surface of any cynic, and you will find a wounded idealist underneath. Because of previous pain or disappointment, cynics make their conclusions about life before the questions have even been asked. This means that beyond just seeing what is wrong with the world, cynics lack the courage to do something about it. The dynamic beneath cynicism is a fear of accepting responsibility. — John Ortberg

I am not a cynic. I love you, I love the world and I love it more with every new inch I discover. But you are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. Indeed, you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you. And you must be responsible for the bodies of the powerful-the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. And this is not reducible to just you-the women around you must be responsible for their bodies in a way that you never will know. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

[in the]..curious way that my idealism has been mixed with my fatalism, so that I can possess the soul of a dreamer and that of a cynic at the same time ... I possess a power of magic ... [to] destroy the balance of a well-designed destiny with my diabolical mind ... — Anais Nin

A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist. — Beau Willimon

Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true. — Marcus Aurelius

Many teachers are concerned about the amount of material they must cover in a course. One cynic suggested a formula: since, he said, students on the average remember only about 40% of what you tell them, the thing to do is to cram into each course 250% of what you hope will stick. — Paul Halmos

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. — Henry Ward Beecher

Idealist: a cynic in the making. — Irving Layton

It's huge!"
"That's what she said!"
Cue riotous laughter as our bus rumbles past Big Ben.
I want to roll my eyes, but I'm afraid pretty soon they're going to get stuck in the back of my head, and penis puns are really not worth my permanent facial damage.
By the time our bus pulls up to the Tower of London, my expectations for the day are somewhere in the basement. Call me a cynic, but since Jason spent the entire time we toured Big Ben talking about how satisfied Mrs Ben must be, my guess is that a landmark famous for its crown jewels is not going to bring out his most charming comments, either. — Lauren Morrill

Radicals often suspect beauty of corruption. Uptight fuckers though they sometimes are, they're right in one thing: art alone cannot change the world. Pens can't take on swords, let alone Predator drones. But as disappointment and violence spread, the antidote is a generosity that the best art can still inspire.

Art is hope against cynicism, creation against entropy. To make art is an act of both love and defiance. Though I'm a cynic, I believe these things are all we have. — Molly Crabapple

A cynic always focuses on problems and not on possibilities. — Debasish Mridha

The player who looks least engaged may be the most committed member of the group. A cynic, after all, is a passionate person who does not want to be disappointed again. — Benjamin Zander

It was sometimes praised as a noble public endeavor, but nearly all other Atlanteans found more important things to do on any given day than help. Even the Atlantean nobles ignored the prospect of somebody other than themselves obtaining unchallengeable power, which a less experienced cynic might expect to catch their attention. With relatively little support, the tiny handful of would-be makers of this device labored under working conditions that were not so much dramatically arduous, as pointlessly annoying. Eventually time ran out and Atlantis was destroyed with the device still far from complete. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

You can hardly call Deor old.' Arisa wrapped her arms around herself; the breeze was brisk despite the sunlight. 'He didn't live long enough to get old. Why would he do that? I know kings are supposed to care for the realm above all else, and so on, and so on, but that's rot. They're men, just like anyone else. Do you think he really, deliberately, laid down his life?'
'Yes,' said Weasel. 'At least, I think it's possible.'
It was the last answer she'd expected from Weasel-the-cynic.
'But why?' Arisa asked.
'Not having been there, I can't say for sure.' Weasel stuck his hands in his pockets. 'But I'd guess it was for the future.'
Arisa frowned. 'I don't understand.'
'The One God willing,' said Weasel softly, 'you never will. — Hilari Bell

Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil. — Vachel Lindsay

I'm very used to playing the tomboy or the sarcastic cynic. That's my go-to. Playing the vulnerable of a real girl that's in real womanlike situations, where it's romanticized, I'm a little nervous about it. — Kristen Bell

Even on especially hard days, I began to notice him everywhere, setting a table before me in the presence of my enemies, pursuing me with his love. Both the child and the cynic walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The cynic focuses on the darkness; the child focuses on the Shepherd. — Paul Miller

Every true heart needed a pragmatic counterweight, and every cynic an idealist to lift his spirits. — Neal Stephenson

I'm an old cynic. — Margot Kidder

Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo - or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role? — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

That's what I've never been able to get about religion: that charmless combination of altruism and insanity. Give me a cynical, self-interested bastard any day of the week; at least you can play chicken with him and know he'll stick to the rules. — Mike Carey

Only a cynic can create horror - for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving demonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them. — Thomas Ligotti

Satan, our adversary, wants us to fail. He spreads lies as part of his effort to destroy our belief. He slyly suggests that the doubter, the skeptic, the cynic is sophisticated and intelligent, while those who have faith in God and His miracles are naive, blind, or brainwashed. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset. Yes, there'll be more war ; and soon, I don't doubt. There always has been. There'll be deaths and disappointments and failures. When they come, you meet them. — James Gould Cozzens

The idea of The Boy Vs. The Cynic is the tension between the wide-eyed optimism in youthfulness where you think nothing can go wrong, I've got the world ahead of me. I'm gonna be a go-getter. — John Reuben Zappin

I'm a cynic about corporate democracy and boards. — Carl Icahn

My native gifts are not remarkable, but I have a certain force of character which has enabled me in a measure to supplement my deficiencies. I have common-sense. Most people cannot see anything, but I can see what is in the front of my nose with extreme clearness; the greatest writers can see through a brick wall. My vision is not so penetrating. For many years I have been described as a cynic; I told the truth. I wish no one to take me for other than I am, and on the other hand I see no need to accept others' pretences. — W. Somerset Maugham

Beautiful, fragile, fleeting, the sunrise shell; but not, for all that, illusory. Because it is not lasting, let us not fall into the cynic's trap and call it an illusion. Duration is not a test of true or false. The day of the dragon-fly or the night of the Saturnid moth is not invalid simply because that phase in its life cycle is brief. Validity need have no relation to time, to duration, to continuity. It is on another plane, judged by other standards. "And what is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place." The sunrise shell has the eternal validity of all beautiful and fleeting things. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I couldn't decide who was more annoying, the fanatic or the cynic. — Rick Yancey

An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. — Sydney J. Harris

What I know is, you have chance in life
of surviving it
if you tolerate loss well; manage not to be a cynic through it all; to subordinate, as Ruskin implied, to keep proportion, to connect the unequal things into a whole that preserves the good, even if admittedly good is often not simple to find. — Richard Ford

A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. The intellectual and emotional life of ordinary people is a very contemptible affair. Just as they borrow their ideas from a sort of circulating library of thought - -the Zeitgeist of an age that has no soul - -and send them back soiled at the end of each week, so they always try to get their emotions on credit, and refuse to pay the bill when it comes in. You should pass out of that conception of life. As soon as you have to pay for an emotion you will know its quality, and be the better for such knowledge. And remember that the sentimentalist is always a cynic at heart. Indeed, sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism. — Oscar Wilde

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

You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you ... but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me; I'm not changing. I like ... I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. 'Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get. — John Candy

What I know is, you have a better chance in life-of surviving it-if you tolerate loss well;manage not to be a cynic through it all; ...
to connect the unequal things into a whole that preserves the good,even if the good is not simple to find. We try, as my sister said. We try. — Richard Ford

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the market price of any single thing. — Oscar Wilde

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic. — Aldous Huxley

An idealist believes that the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. - Sydney J. Harris — David Allen

Cynicism places the cynic at the center seat of judgement with the self appointed authority to criticize and condemn. — Jayce O'Neal

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. — H.L. Mencken

He was a cynic and like most cynics, totally selfish and self-indulgent. — Norman Vincent Peale

He might have been naive, but he didn't care; he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic. — Colum McCann

We have no hope if we cannot prove uncle cynic wrong. — Chetan Bhagat

This boy," he said, indicating the paintings with one sweep of his arms, "was romantic. He thought that it was beauty that bound everything together. And for him it was true. Life had been beautiful for him. He was very young. He knew very little of life. He saw beauty but he did not feel any true passion. How could he? He did not know. He had not really encountered the force of beauty's opposite."
"Are you more cynical now, then?" she asked him.
"Cynical," he frowned, "No, not that. I know that there is an ugly side of life-and not just human life. I know that everything is not simply beautiful. I am not a romantic as this boy was. But I am not a cynic either. There is something enduring in all of life, Anne, something tough. Something. Something terribly weak yet incredibly powerful ... — Mary Balogh

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing. — Oscar Wilde

The cynic who twitted Aristippus by observing that the philosopher who could dine on herbs might despise the company of a king, was well replied to by Aristippus, when he remarked that the philosopher who could enjoy the company or a king might also despise a dinner of herbs. — Charles Caleb Colton

It all depends on what people you're talking about helping. That's the wonderful think about just about every religion on the planet - they're all so incredibly selfish. — Derek Landy

... a cynic who was still saddened whenever his jaundiced view of mankind was confirmed ... — Sharon Kay Penman

Remember, beneath every cynic there lies a romantic, and probably an injured one. — Glenn Beck

It takes a clever man to turn cynic and a wise man to be clever enough not to. — Fannie Hurst

All the hate and scorn and love of a deep nature, such as the shy man is ever cursed by, fester and corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic. — Jerome K. Jerome

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. — John Lennon

The truth is, I pretend to be a cynic, but I am really a dreamer who is terrified of wanting something she may never get. — Joanna Hoffman

Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Daniel snorted. "You are such a cynic."
"You're such a romantic."
"Yeah. Isn't diversity grand? — Kaje Harper

I had a cousin, Randall, killed on Iwo Jima. Have I told you?

Have I told you his was a beautiful smile? Not the smile of a cynic, nor the easy, hungry smile of boys his age, whose smiles that aim to get them somewhere, are a commodity in exchange for God knows what. No. His was completely without intent; an accident of a smile. The kind of smile that would have surprised him if he could have seen it for himself. But he was too young to know his own extraordinariness. — Kate Walbert

Falling in love is very real, but I used to shake my head when people talked about soul mates, poor deluded individuals grasping at some supernatural ideal not intended for mortals but sounded pretty in a poetry book. Then, we met, and everything changed, the cynic has become the converted, the sceptic, an ardent zealot. — E.A. Bucchianeri

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

If you're regularly willing to give a critique, but not willing to take one, you're not a leader, you're a cynic. — Ed Stetzer

Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers,
things standing shall fall,
but the moving ever shall stay. — Basava

Because - truth? - on the scale of significance, that stuff doesn't even register.
What has me pushed past the boiling point ... what has me really, really upset is learning the woman I thought was so incredibly strong I married her on the spot ... is actually
a quitter who runs from challenge,
a coward too afraid to even try,
a liar who makes promises she won't keep and
a cynic too bitter to believe what's right in front of her face. Is that real enough for you? — Mira Lyn Kelly

A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts. — Wilbur Smith

I am not a cynic. — Kevin Costner

That was the splendid thing about life: Though it was cruel, it was also mysterious, filled with wonder and surprise; sometimes the surprises were so amazing that they qualified as miraculous, and by witnessing those miracles, a despondent person could discover a reason to live, a cynic could obtain unexpected relief from ennui, and a profoundly wounded boy could find the will to heal himself and medicine for melancholy. — Dean Koontz

Long ago one of the Cynic philosophers strutted through the streets of Athens in a torn mantle to make himself admired by everyone by displaying his contempt for convention. One day Socrates met him and said: 'I see your vanity through the hole in your mantle.' Your dirt too, sir, is vanity, and your vanity is dirty. — Milan Kundera

A cynic should never marry an idealist. For the cynic, marriage represents the welcome end of romantic life, with all its agony and ecstasy. But for the idealist, it is only the beginning. — Julie Burchill

What a cynic would call a coincidence, Amy called a clear answer, and more than an answer
a sign of the love of the Lord. — Elisabeth Elliot