Best 424 quotes in «cynical quotes» category

Cynical? Thats my fascination. I do hateful things, for which people love me, And lovable things for which they hate me. I am a friend of enemies, the enemy of friends; I am admired for my detestability. I am both Poles and the Equator, with no Temperate Zones between.

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.

Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it.

Cynical is a fool's word for realist.

Despite his cynical exterior, he had a good heart-and Lissa owned most of it.

Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.

Cynicism is something that is part of the media production of a certain type of subjectivity or consciousness that is passive and disempowered, cynical, fatalistic, pessimistic.

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.

Don't give up on your ideals. Don't compromise. Don't turn to expediency. And for heaven's sake . . . don't get cynical.

Don't become cynical. Don't give up hope. Don't believe that everything is judged only by expediency. There is idealism in this world. There is human brotherhood.

Don't get cynical. Don't ever think you can't make a difference.

Everybody's got a dud. You can't get out of it. That's the price of admission: you'll get some duds. You'll get some things where you missed a little. It's a crap feeling when you're going through it. But the main thing is as long as you're not doing anything for cynical reasons, then you'll be okay.

Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.” “I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?” “The way you tell it, it is.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Every country has the government it deserves.

Do you want to injure someone's reputation? Don't speak ill of him, speak too well.

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.

False hope really makes you cynical.

Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.

Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don't swallow it.

Fulfillment of desire taken to extremes doesn't necessarily make us happy. It tends to make us rather cynical.

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

George Bush and John Ashcroft were religious in a scary way, but the rational among us could always take heart that, deep down, the Bush administration was more cynical than messianic.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Generally I don't like doing remakes, but I think that's more in the cynical world of Hollywood where normally remakes are purely for commercial reasons.

Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes.

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

Hippy, you think everything is a conspiracy. Everything is!

Here I was in Estonia, doing a concert for 5,000 people, and not many people know the song My Way - Gorbachev in the 80s, My Way had just become a famous song, and [Mikhail] Gorbachev in a satirical, kind of cynical manner coined the term the Sinatra Doctrine and My Way was the song because the Baltic states in the Warsaw Pact wanted to go their own way and secede from the Soviet Union, so joking he says," Yeah, we've got the Sinatra Doctrine now.

Hatred is a very underestimated emotion.

Humans have always preferred to live their lives​ by daylight. I used to think it was because human beings have crappy night vision, and it wasn't until I got older and more cynical that I realized it was because they have less to be afraid of during the day.

History is neither written nor made without love or hate.

How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

I am very cynical. That is absolutely what police is doing. But you don't even have to be cynical. I mean, politicians don't even pretend they're doing otherwise. The problem is the other side is not screaming bloody murder and saying, you know, "This is immoral, this is slavery, you're profiting from human bondage.

I believe that conventional marketing techniques are increasingly ineffective. Customers are hyped out. They have been overmarketed. They are becoming more cynical about the whole advertising and marketing process.

I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest.

I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.

I could never be cynical, not that I think there's anything wrong with cynicism. I think it can be quite funny at times. But I just feel so grateful to be alive.

I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?

I don't mock things, which makes me more vulnerable to mockery myself. If you're cynical, you're protected from mockery. But I have to be nice. I don't think I have irony. A sense of humour, yes, but not irony.

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.

I don't seem to be cynical to myself but how what I say goes down with others is their problem. I'm realistic.

I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside.

I don't see myself as a stand-up comic doing cynical, mean-spirited or disrespectful stuff. I'm very aware that I don't like to disrespect people too much.

I don't think something necessarily has to be mean or cynical to represent 'edgy.' I think 'edgy' can mean a lot of different things.

If anything good came out of 9/11, to me, was that people were so cynical about the world - all you hear about on the news is all the bad stuff everyday, but what was refreshing to me was after that, you saw how many good people there are out there. For every one bad one, there's a thousand good ones.

I felt slightly superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I became quite cynical talking to my student friends.

I don't want to make things that are cynical and aggressive just because, oh my God, there's enough of that going on in the world without me adding to it.