Best 424 quotes in «cynical quotes» category

The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business.

The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself.

The opposite of creativity is cynicism

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

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.

The reason that women do not love one another is - men.

There are certain reactions that you aren't allowed to show in Berlin, for example that you feel offended. If you do, the best-case scenario is a sympathetic article along the lines of: Nice guy, but he's not up to it. The alternative is to don a suit of armor and become cynical. But that's not healthy either: Cynicism is the worst characteristic a politician can have. That's why you have to have an internal balance in Berlin, so you can stay true to yourself. And I have that.

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

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.

There is nothing more I should do to it now, and therefore I am not likely to be more ready to go than at this moment.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

There's a part of me that still hates everything, and my natural view default setting is still very cynical and dark

The rich are not born sceptical or cynical. They are made that way by events, circumstances.

The way to a woman's heart is through your wallet.

The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.

The world is now multicultural the same way the world is round. It's not a selling point, it's not a 'quirky' feature, it's not a cynical marketing ploy, it's not an artistic statement, it's not even a plot device. It's a fact, like seedless grapes.

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 worst thing you can become in life is cynical. Cynical is like concrete. and nothing grows in concrete.

They love too much that die for love.

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.

They sent me away to teach me how to be sensible, Logical, oh responsible, practical. And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical...

This new world which is being born is cynical and amnesiac. And it has eliminated perspective.

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.

To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.

Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? Why, when it prospers, none dare call it treason.

This is such a cynical world. The way the world is, there's so much going on and so much stress in the world and so much darkness and craziness and imbalance.

There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.

Unhappy women are given to protecting their sensitiveness by cynical gossip, by whining, by high-church and new-thought religions, or by a fog of vagueness.

Valentine's Day purely commercial, cynical enterprise, anyway. Matter of supreme indifference to me.

Very few writers understand the complex history and maddening social order of the Mississippi Delta. For Steve Yarbrough, though, it's home turf. He is wickedly observant, funny, cynical, evocative, and he possesses a gift that cannot be taught: he can tell a story.

Walt had a marvelous intuition. And because he understood people very well, liked them and had great respect for people, there was nothing cynical about Walt.

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.

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.

We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion.

We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.

We can be negative and cynical or we can be charged and hot wored to find a way through it, over it, around it under it.

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.

We don't call it sin today, we call it self-expression.

We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.

We have never done anything in a cynical fake way

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.

We live in a world where everybody's supposed to be cool and act tough and put up fronts, and everybody is so cynical.

We muckraked, not because we hated our world, but because we loved it. We were not hopeless, we were not cynical, we were not bitter.

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

What a liberal really wants is to bring about change that will not in any way endanger his position.

We saw too much beauty to be cynical, felt too much joy to be dismissive, climbed too many mountains to be quitters, kissed too many girls to be deceivers, saw too many sunrises not to be believers, broke too many strings to be pro's and gave too much love to be concerned where it goes.

What does not kill you will make you stronger and more cynical.

Whatever politicians, activists and manipulators propose, it is the phlegmatic, indifferent, ingrained electorate which disposes.

What is love but a second-hand emotion?