Cynical Quotes - Page 17

• The men of the press, who despised their own profession, did not know why they were enjoying it today. One of them, a young man with years of notorious success behind him and a cynical look of twice his age, said suddenly, 'I know what I'd like to be: I wish I could be a man who covers news!'

  Ayn Rand

  Success, Men, Years

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.182, Hamilton Books

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• I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don't hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory.

  Peter Greenaway

  Hate, Men, Thinking

  "Maybe I'm too clever". Interview With Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. May 10, 2004.

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• Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

  Kamala Harris

  Dream, Logic, Romney

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• Reviewers and critics can be overly cynical. If something the least bit sentimental comes up, they'll often start flying off the handle. But I'm like, 'Wait a minute, you've had those times in your life. Everybody has.

  Gilberto Hernandez Guerrero

  Waiting, Flying, Sentimental

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• So long as human history continues, we will face the perennial challenge of realizing, maintaining and strengthening peace through dialogue, of making dialogue the sure and certain path to peace. We must uphold and proclaim this conviction without cease, whatever coldly knowing smiles or cynical critiques may greet us.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Knowing, Long, Challenges

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• We should take heart from our own experience and performance. In a cynical world we have become an inspiration to many.

  Nelson Mandela

  Inspiration, Heart, World

  "Nelson Mandela: South Africa is proof that there is reason for optimism". www.independent.co.uk. May 10, 2004.

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

  Ronald Reagan

  Giving Up, Don't Give Up, Heaven

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• I think people today are very cynical. They need to bring other people down. Reality television and tabloid magazines—never before did we need to see movie stars taking out their garbage. But all of a sudden, it's front-page news—trying to figure out who's dating whom, all that stuff. Who cares?

  Scarlett Johansson

  Stars, Thinking, Reality

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• How marvelous it all is! Built not by saints and angels, but the work of men's hands; cemented with men's honest blood and with a world of tears, welded by the best brains of centuries past; not without the taint and reproach incidental to all human work, but constructed on the whole with pure and splendid purpose. Human, and yet not wholly human -- for the most heedless and the most cynical must see the finger of the Divine.

  Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery

  Angel, Past, Men

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• What I'm trying to do is deliver results, not promises; results, not vision; results, not concepts. The world is cynical about IBM's promises.

  Lou Gerstner

  Promise, Vision, Trying

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• If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work, and even of their sleeping moments, and the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement. We feel, after years of experience, that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them.

  William Duncan Silkworth

  Children, Growing Up, Sleep

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• New York is hard, cynical, ruthless, even beyond other cities. From their early repression its children emerge sophisticated, both stunted and overdeveloped, perverted, premature, forced by the artificiality of their environment.

  Ernest Gruening

  New York, Children, Cities

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• You know, many people have called me, friends from the nationalist camp, revisionists and so on, from around the world, have called me over the years - and now again because of what happened - and they are all very cynical about the police and the authorities.

  Ernst Zundel

  Friends, Years, People

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• But I'm trying not to be cynical - I don't want to be one of those people who has a cool opportunity and blows it. It's really amazing what's happening to me.

  Shannyn Sossamon

  Blow, Opportunity, People

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• I think the people who are making Christmas-themed movies today feel that people are more cynical about Christmas. There's more of an edge.

  Leonard Maltin

  Christmas, Thinking, People

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• You just don't make decisions about what you're going to be like when you are old. I know that I am making that decision right now. Every time we perceive ourselves, others, life, the world and God in a certain way, we are deepening the habits that will take over in old age. Every time I act on the insights that I am getting now I am deciding my future and choosing to be a kindly or cynical old man. Our yesterdays lie heavily upon our todays and our todays will lie heavily upon our tomorrows.

  John Powell

  Lying, Men, Yesterday

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• A cynical plan has been launched in Ukraine to destroy this administration

  Viktor Yushchenko

  Ukraine, Administration, Plans

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• I was not interested in doing the plot of Oedipus in blackface. I did wonder, what would these people have been like if they hadn't been in that situation?... One could look at Oedipus, or at my character Augustus, as a cynical schemer who did everything because he was hungry for power. But that's just too easy. I'm more interested in how humans can embody conflicting goals and emotions.

  Rita Dove

  Character, Oedipus, People

  "The darker face of the earth". American Theatre, November 1, 1996.

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• The need always to lie and always to avoid the truth stripped everyone of what Custine called 'the two greatest gifts of God-the soul and the speech which communicates it.' People became hypocritical, cunning, mistrustful, cynical, silent, cruel, and indifferent to the fate of others as a result of the destruction of their own souls.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Lying, Fate, Two

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• As a parent, I want my kids to have an optimistic outlook, and one that has hope, and that makes sense, where good does triumph over evil and it's not cynical, and it's not snarky.

  Dee Bradley Baker

  Optimistic, Kids, Evil

  "5 Force-Full Questions: Dee Bradley Baker at Star Wars Celebration VI". Interview with John Booth, www.wired.com. September 23, 2012.

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• Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dog, Sight, House

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.407

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• An idealist who couldn't cope becomes cynical.

  Amy Ray

  Idealist

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• If someone is cynical and doesn't vote and ends up with a crummy job in a crummy country with a decimated environment, they only have themselves to blame.

  Moby

  Country, Jobs, Blame

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• I am very optimistic about the long run prospects for democracy in China. Chinese society is being dramatically and rapidly transformed. And there’s rising evidence that the new generation not only lacks faith in communism anymore, they think it’s a joke. They’re very cynical about their leadership and they want democratic change.

  Larry Diamond

  Running, Optimistic, Thinking

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• I prefer cynical people. Nice guys grow on trees.

  J Mascis

  Nice, People, Guy

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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