Cynicism Quotes - Page 11

• I don't think of myself as particularly earnest. I have long bouts of cynicism and skepticism. So much of my early life was full of uncertainties. It still is. My "Buddha book" expresses that. Perhaps that's what created this impression of earnestness.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Book, Thinking, Long

  Interview with Sarah Fay, staging.believermag.com. March 2007.

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• Cynicism is no more mature than naïveté. You're no more mature, just more burned.

  Karl Marlantes

  Vets, Mature, Burned

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• Anonymity is an abused privilege, abused most by people who mistake vitriol for wisdom and cynicism for wit.

  Danny Wallace

  Mistake, People, Privilege

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• I think despair and cynicism are two different things. On the flip side of hope is despair. Belief and doubt are the same thing, in that to believe something you have to actively doubt the opposite. And from my perspective, that's the deep end. You're dealing with the unknown; you're dealing with mystery.

  Jon Foreman

  Believe, Thinking, Opposites

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• This is our moment...while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

  Barack Obama

  Yes We Can, People, Doubt

  President-Elect Victory Speech, delivered 4 November 2008, Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois

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• Cynicism is carnality that thinks its smart.

  Beth Moore

  Smart, Thinking, Carnality

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• I exaggerate. I oversimplify. I generalize. But there’s no cynicism here. American poetry is a mess. Long live American poetry.

  David Biespiel

  Long, Mess, Poetry Is

  "David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Cynicism Of Mark Edmundson, Or Poetry Is Still Not Dead" by David Biespiel, therumpus.net. June 21, 2013.

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• But hard bitten cynicism leaves one feeling peevish, and too much of it can do lasting damage to your heart.

  Julie Powell

  Heart, Feelings, Too Much

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• Cynicism is just an excuse for not helping.

  Marianne Williamson

  Helping Others, Excuse, Helping Hand

  FaceBook post by Marianne Williamson from Sep 10, 2013

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• If spirituality is not religion or cynicism or sentimentality or narcissism, then what is it?... we can confidently say... that spirituality is fearlessness. It is a way of looking boldly at this life we have been given, here, now, on earth, as this human being.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Earth, Way, Spirituality

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• The end of an age is always a time of turmoil, war, economic catastrophe, cynicism, lawlessness and distress. But it is also an era of heightened challenge and creativity, of issues, and their world-wide scope, never has an era faced a more demanding and exciting crisis. This then, above all else, is the great and glorious era to live in, a time of of opportunity, one requiring fresh and vigorous thinking, indeed, a glorious time to be alive.

  R.J. Rushdoony

  War, Creativity, Thinking

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• Christianity not only saves you from sin, but from cynicism.

  E. Stanley Jones

  Sin, Christianity

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• But there's a fourth interpretation: Obama can't leave his comfort zone. No president since Woodrow Wilson has been as enamored of abstract ideas or more sure that disagreement with him is proof of ignorance, bad faith or dogmatism. As a candidate, he insisted his real opponent was 'cynicism,' and in his address last week, he returned to this trite formulation, insisting again he was bravely battling the cynics.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Real, Ignorance, Ideas

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• To give [the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba] even covert support is on a par with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world, nor on our own consciences.

  J. William Fulbright

  War, Pigs, Giving

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• For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.

  Barack Obama

  Inspiring, Country, Believe

  A More Perfect Union, delivered 18 March 2008, Philadelphia, PA

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

  Joe Klein

  Cynical, Journalism, Mediocre

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• A beardless cynic is the shame of nature.

  John Milton

  Shame, Cynic

  David Garrick, Arthur Murphy, Edward Ravenscroft, William Shakespeare, Henry Fielding (1792). “A Collection of the Most Esteemed Farces and Entertainments Performed on the British Stage”, p.224

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• Cynicism can be funny. But it's the easy way. You'll forget to enjoy anything. I try to make the evolving choice, the forward-moving, life-giving choice. Just keep living, man.

  Matthew McConaughey

  Moving, Men, Giving

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• I'm an eternal optimist with a small degree of cynicism.

  Sarah McLachlan

  Degrees, Optimist, Eternal

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• Golf cannot be played in anger, or in any mood of emotiional excess. Half the golf balls struck by amateurs are hit if not in rage surely in bewilderment, or gloom, or in cynicism, or even hysterically - all of those emotional excesses must be contained by the professional. Which is why balance is one of the essential ingredients of golf. Professionals invariably trudge phlegmatically around the course - whatever emotions are seething within - with the grim yet placid and bored look of cowpokes, slack-bodied in their saddles, who have been tending the same herd for two months.

  George Plimpton

  Golf, Emotional, Two

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• the cynic is a coward. He foresees all barrenness so that barrenness can never surprise him.

  Anais Nin

  Coward, Surprise, Cynic

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• Nothing is more urgent than a serious, dare I say compassionate, debate as to where we are going at home and abroad. Technicians cannot master revolutions; every great achievement was an idea before it became a reality. Cathedrals cannot be built by those who are paralyzed by doubt or consumed by cynicism. If a society loses the capacity for great conception, it can be administered but not governed.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Wisdom, Home, Reality

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• 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.

  Stephen Colbert

  Wise, Remember You, Remembers You

  Stephen Colbert Commencement Address, departments.knox.edu. June 2006.

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• I really like dark music and darkness in general and cynicism and pessimism and negativity because it allows you to create an even bigger contrast.

  Andrew W.K.

  Dark, Negativity, Pessimism

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Enforced religion breeds precisely what it most fears: rebellion against religion, cynicism about religion, skepticism about its claims, and, as a consequence, indifference at best or outright antipathy at worst.

  Langdon Brown Gilkey

  Church, Indifference, Rebellion

  Langdon Gilkey, Langdon Brown Gilkey (1985). “Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock”, p.11, University of Virginia Press

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