95 Cynicism Quotes

Even the propagandists on the radio find it very difficult to really say let alone believe that the world will be a happy place, of love and peace and plenty, and that the lion will lie down with the lamb and everybody will believe anybody.

What all this posturing and fake glamor results in is a vast detachment and cynicism on the part of the artists. Since it's impossible to have respect for an audience that'll take just about anything you care to dish out, and the impassive demeanor is so central to the role, a general numbnose is all that can be expected.

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.

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

The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.

I've been barbecued, stewed, screwed, tattooed, and fried by people claiming to be my friends. The human race has gone backward, not forward, since the days we were apes swinging through the trees.

'Bah!' said Scrooge, 'Humbug!'

There's lots of law these days, but not much justice. Celebrities murder their wives and go free. A mother kills her children, and the news people on TV say she's the victim and want you to send money to her lawyers. When everything's upside down like this, what fool just sits back and thinks justice will prevail?

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

It's all bullshit, folks, and it's bad for ya.

Tomorrow never happens. It's all the same fucking day, man.

I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all.

Don't be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. 'Yes' is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.

'I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it'.

She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance except, perhaps, fair play.

I believe there is something out there watching over us - unfortunately it's the government.

As my poor father used to say In 1863, Once people start on all this Art Goodbye, moralitee!

Maybe I should publish the book. The world is coming to an end anyway! (on My 60 Memorable Games)

In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him.

Now there's this about cynicism. It's the universe's most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you're not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace.

[A] classic - something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

I won't eat anything that has intelligent life, but I'd gladly eat a network executive or a politician. [2]

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal, - that is they have ceased to be self-centered, have given up their individuality.... The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.

Perfume; Any smell that is used to drown a worse one

Whoever coined the term 'Let the Buyer Beware' was probably bleeding from the asshole.

Hal: God is a gentleman. He prefers blondes.

There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix - a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get...

Bristow hasn't hit it yet. What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar. --reported comment made to a Senate clerk while Senator Joseph Bristow of Kansas was making a speech in which he repeatedly used the phrase, 'What this country needs....' Although Marshall may have spoken the words, they originated with newspaper cartoonist Kin Hubbard who had his 'Abe Martin' character say them. 1

We've been told that our crises are somebody else's fault. We are distracted from our real failures and told to blame the other party, or gay people, or immigrants, and as people have looked away in frustration and disillusionment, we know who has filled the void. The cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests, who've turned government into only a game they can afford to play. They write the checks while you get stuck with the bill. They get access while you get to write a letter.

Here's the rule for bargains - 'Do other men, for they would do you.' That's the true business precept.

They are welcome to all the money I have in America. Rice should take half of it to improve the way she looks. She should have her teeth straightened and her face fixed, and should make herself look nice. I donate what is left to George Bush, because I know he will soon be admitted to a mental asylum because of his policies.

One of the three will want me anyway. And my conscience is quiet about my not caring which one I choose: the three of them are equally bad for Syria.

'Most men', he quoted, 'are of naught more use in their lives but as machines for turning food into shit.' Ivan cocked an eyebrow at him. 'Who said that? Your grandfather?' 'Leonardo da Vinci', Miles returned primly. But was compelled to add, 'Grandfather quoted it to me, though.'

Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder): 'Actors are not animals! They're human beings!' Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel): 'They are? Have you ever eaten with one?'

He seems both wholly cynical about the purposes of those in power, and wholly unforgiving. Those who direct American policy - and, by implication, those who direct the policy of any state - are allowed no regrets, no morals, no feelings, and when they change their policies they appear to do so for entirely Machiavellian reasons. Chomsky has little interest in the question of 'good in bad' - of how there can be good behaviour in the context of bad policies - and seems to deny the complexity of human affairs... --Martin Woollacott, January 14, 1989 [211]

'We're all monsters,' said Daisy with enthusiasm. 'It's the Age of Monsters.'

Everything is impossible so just quit.

Nothing is too shocking for me.

Aloof with hermit-eye I scan The present works of present man - A wild and dreamlike trade of blood and guile, Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!

Young people are very cynical now, you know? Very cynical! They've been taught cynicism, they've been - they've been bred cynicism. So, I think it's important to give them hope and realism in the same package, you know? You can be realistic but there should be - there should be hope in it. Because hope's what we're about. If we don't have hope then we don't go on.

On his death bed, he supposedly asked his banker, 'Do I have enough money to buy all the children of Philadelphia a bike each?' The banker looked at his notes and said yes. Fields stayed quiet for a moment in deep thought and replied 'Well fuck 'em!'

There's a lot of bastards out there!

Sonja: I do believe that this is truly the best of all possible worlds. Boris: Well, it's certainly the most expensive.

'Freedom! Yeah! Freedom! Yeah, right!'

'Me, I don't give a fuck. You know, a hole's a hole. As long as there's a little heat in there I don't give a fuck.' (from 'Testing for Jeopardy')

'Runway is just old hat to me, sweetheart.' (from 'The Gay Model')

Long often compared the Democratic and Republican parties to 'High Popalorum and Low Popahirum,' two patent medicines with different labels but identical ingredients.

Lyrically I thought Kurt's writing was sort of cynical and that his words meant more than even he realized.

Step right up young lady Your two hundred birthdays make you old if not senile And we see the symptoms there in your rigor mortis smile With your old folks eating dog food and your children eating paint While the pirates own the flag and sell us sermons on restraint

Husbands are usually so overrated

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.

'Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it ... It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for ... and the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.'

Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.

Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.

Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.

One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

People like that woman make it clear just how asinine it is to believe that human beings have some kind of in-built universal sense of goodness. These days I think that everybody's just one spit away from being a mall bomber.

Upon presenting a Duke of Edinburgh Award to a student, when informed that the young man was going to help out in Romania for six months, he asked if the student was going to help the Romanian orphans; upon being informed he was not, it was claimed the 85-year-old duke added: 'Ah good, there's so many over there you feel they breed them just to put in orphanages.'[7]

And let our despite go to those who work and fight and our hate to those who hope and trust.

Cynicism is cheap-you can buy it at any Monoprix store-it's built into all poor-quality goods.

Blood's not thicker than money.

I drink to make other people interesting.

The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made.

There is only one way to find out if a man is honest...ask him. If he says 'yes', you know he is crooked.

I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

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. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.

A scout troop consists of twelve little kids dressed like schmucks following a big schmuck dressed like a kid.

And swear No where Lives a woman true and fair. If thou find'st one, let me know, Such a pilgrimage were sweet; Yet do not, I would not go, Though at next door we might meet, Though she were true, when you met her, And last, till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two, or three.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, 'Tis all barren!

Call me a dreamer, but one day, my name will become an adjective for everything cynical and untrustworthy in human nature.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

That's what a shrink is for, my friends and neighbors; their job is to fuck the mentally disturbed and make them pregnant with sanity. It's a bull's job and they go to school to learn how, and their courses are all variations on a theme: Slipping It to the Psychos for Fun and Profit, Mostly Profit. And if you find yourself someday lying on that great analyst's couch where so many have lain before you, I'd ask you to remember one thing: When you get sanity by stud, the child always looks like the father. And they have a very high suicide rate.

Luck was a joke. Even good luck was just bad luck with its hair combed.

'DTA (Don't trust anybody)'

A new burst of rage swept over him - What did it matter whether it was true or not - whether anything was true or not? What did it matter if anybody had done all the hideous and loathsome things that everybody else said they had done? It was what everybody was saying! It was what everybody believed - what everybody was interested in! It was the measure of a whole society - their ideals and their standards! It was the way they spent their time, repeating nasty scandals about each other; living in an atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism, with endless whispering and leering, and gossip of low intrigue.