Cynical Quotes - Page 9

• For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Cutting, Simple, Expression

  Anthony Bourdain (2011). “Tony Bourdain boxset: Kitchen Confidential & Medium Raw”, p.281, A&C Black

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• ...Sometimes I suspect that what had really happened was that we became more resigned, more cynical, raised our pain thresholds as we lowered our expectations. All in all, settled for less.

  Emma Donoghue

  Pain, Expectations, Sometimes

  Emma Donoghue (2013). “Hood”, p.145, Pan Macmillan

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• Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.

  Andrei Sakharov

  Stress, War, Men

  "Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom" by Andrei Sakharov, ("The Threat to Intellectual Freedom"), www.sakharov-center.ru. 1968.

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• In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.

  H. L. Mencken

  Patriotism, United States, Doing Good

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.359, Vintage

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• As a result, I've been portrayed as a cynical barbarian preying on the very clients I was charged to defend.

  Jack Abramoff

  Barbarians, Clients, Results

  "Jack in a Box". Zagorin, A., content.time.com. April 30, 2005.

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• When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed, in the face of every constitutional convention, only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister – no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

  William Hague

  Lying, Men, Faces

  William Hague's Speech to the Spring forum in Harrogate, www.theguardian.com. March 4, 2001.

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• You must lose a fly to catch a trout.

  George Herbert

  Inspiration, Greatness, Design

  George Herbert (1853). “The poetical works of George Herbert [and The synagogue, by C. Harvey.]. With life, critical diss., and notes, by G. Gilfillan”, p.317

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• The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mind, Causes, Natural

  "Symposium On Epic Of Thomas Jefferson:Embargo Act Of 1807 & The Quest For Limited Government Over Big Government". Book by Festus Ogunbitan (p. 1498), April 11, 2014.

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• I think you can be cynical about religion on occasion, and certainly skeptical about the degree to which some people use religion to manipulate other people.

  Peter Jennings

  Thinking, People, Degrees

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

  Boris Johnson

  Self, Interest, Cameron

  "Boris Johnson ... in his own words" by Isabelle Chevallot, www.theguardian.com. July 16, 2007.

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• It's an indication of how cynical our society has become that any kind of love story with a sad theme is automatically ridiculed as sentimental junk.

  Winona Ryder

  Sad, Junk, Stories

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• In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious.

  Michael Shermer

  Principles, Curious, Closed Minded

  "What Is Skepticism, Anyway?" by Michael Shermer, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 31, 2013.

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• As we get older - perhaps I'm just speaking for myself - we can get too cynical.

  Matt Smith

  "Matt Smith interview: lord of misrule" by Euan Ferguson, www.theguardian.com. December 3, 2011.

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• 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.

  Matt Taibbi

  Religious, Heart, Scary

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• Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove.

  Matt Taibbi

  Political, United States, Modern

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• What we Americans go through to pick a president is not only crazy and unnecessary but genuinely abusive. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in a craven, cynical effort to stir up hatred and anger on both sides.

  Matt Taibbi

  Crazy, Effort, Hatred

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• The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Quality, Literature

  Henry David Thoreau, Carl Hovde (1980). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.170, Princeton University Press

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• It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Sympathy, Men, Law

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.52, Heron Dance Press

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• Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

  Lionel Trilling

  Art, Immature, Architecture

  In Esquire Sept. 1962. Cf. Igor Stravinsky 210:16

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• Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.

  Bell Hooks

  Heart, People, Betrayed

  "All About Love: New Visions". Book by Nell Hooks, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2000.

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• Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Confidence, Art, Math

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1956). “The Modern Temper”

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• Nothing can alter the character of God. In the course of a human life, tastes and outlook and temper may change radically: a kind, equable man may turn bitter and crotchety: a man of good-will may grow cynical and callous. But nothing of this sort happens to the Creator. He never becomes less truthful, or merciful, or just, or good, than He used to be.

  J. I. Packer

  God, Character, Men

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• The past in the hands of historians is not what it was.

  Lynn Townsend White, Jr.

  Past, Hands, History

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• History is neither written nor made without love or hate.

  Theodor Mommsen

  Hate, History, Made

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• I may have grown cynical from long service, but this is a tendency I do not like, and I sometimes think I'd rather be a dog and bay at the moon than stay in the Senate another six years and listen to it.

  John Sharp Williams

  Dog, Thinking, Moon

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