Cynicism Quotes - Page 15

• The cynics in life are the people who are always trying to do things for people who don't want things done for them.

  Marianne Moore

  Always Trying, People, Done

  Marianne Moore, Patricia C. Willis (1986). “The complete prose of Marianne Moore”, Viking Pr

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• 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.

  Drew Barrymore

  Grateful, Thinking, Optimism

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• Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.

  A. J. Liebling

  Inexperience, Products

  A. J. Liebling (2005). “Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer”, p.20, Macmillan

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• I know it's easier to portray a world filled with cynicism and anger, where problems are solved with violence...It's an easy out. What's a whole lot tougher is to offer alternatives, to present other ways conflicts can be resolved, and to show you can have a positive impact on your world. To do that, you have to put yourself out on a limb, take chances, and run the risk of being called a do-gooder.

  Jim Henson

  Running, Impact, Risk

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• Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.

  Peter Senge

  Mistake, Expectations, Frustrated

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• I have to admit that one of the saddest things I see in ministry is a woman who belittles her husband. Even if he has indeed failed in some way, his wife’s disparaging words compound the disaster exponentially. Her cynicism is utterly emasculating, and many times, incredibly subtle. Like a fine, thin blade, it slices deep, penetrating to the very core of his masculine soul.

  Stu Weber

  Husband, Wife, Soul

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• Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil.

  Vachel Lindsay

  Devil, Helping, Gentle

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• Cynicism, like gullibility, is a symptom of underdeveloped critical faculties.

  Jamie Whyte

  Symptoms, Faculty, Critical

  Jamie Whyte (2004). “Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders”, p.11, McGraw Hill Professional

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• America is a country in which I see the most persistant idealism and the blandest of cynicism and the race is on between its vitality and its decadence.

  Alistair Cooke

  Country, Race, America

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• HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is our birthright. Receptivity is a superpower.

  Rob Brezsny

  Love Is, Evil, Joy

  Rob Brezsny (2005). “Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings”, p.7, Frog Books

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• I suppose I'd had, by the standards of that pre-permissive time, a good deal of sex for my age. Girls, or a certain kind of girl, liked me; I had a car-not so common among undergraduates in those days-and I had some money. I wasn't ugly; and even more important, I had my loneliness, which, as every cad knows, is a deadly weapon with women. My 'technique' was to make a show of unpredictability, cynicism, and indifference. Then, like a conjurer with his white rabbit, I produced the solitary heart.

  John Fowles

  Girl, Sex, Loneliness

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

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• They were fast-moving opportunists encased in cynicism and proud of it.

  Jay Carr

  Moving, Proud, Opportunist

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• You're killing yourself with cynicism. Your idols got taken away from you one by one and now you have nothing to give your love to.

  Philip K. Dick

  Taken, Idols, Giving

  Philip K. Dick (2012). “The Man in the High Castle”, p.91, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• "Cynicism," like "heresy" and "heterodoxy" and "atheism" and "agnosticism" and "paganism" and "heathenism," is above all else a way for organized orthodoxy's caste of official censors to encyst and segregate and thus neutralize all contrarian forms of seeing and thinking, all (necessarily implicitly) prohibited and repressed ways of exercising disruptive and iconoclastic intuition and intellection (for to analyze and explain these things too openly is to give them publicity and potential cogency when the point is to asphyxiate them).

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Exercise, Thinking

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• Maia Sharp is one of America's great singer-songwriters. Her storytelling runs profound and
  deep while honoring a pop tradition that urges you to sing along and feel good. Maia sings with
  an angelic voice that's shrouded in stark realism and a healthy dose of cynicism.....it's an exotic
  cocktail!

  Don Was

  Running, America, Voice

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• I find it actually the height of romance to legally bind yourself to someone because you're really taking care of someone, and letting them take care of you. I actually have no cynicism about that.

  Jen Kirkman

  Romance, Care, Height

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I suppose I miss the British cynicism and the humor.

  Rod Stewart

  Missing, British

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• It seems to me that the way to remove people's cynicism is, when asked a straight question, to give a straight answer.

  Jeremy Paxman

  Giving, People, Answers

  "Paxman answers the questions" by Matt Wells, www.theguardian.com. January 31, 2005.

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• You know, the cynicism that is in the politics, it is not for my soul. It makes me - out of me, an extremely bitter, cynical person that I hate to see in the mirror, really.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Hate, Mirrors, Cynical

  "Marjane Satrapi: 'A Real Love Story Has To Finish Bad'". Interview with Scott Simon, www.krvs.org. August 18, 2012.

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• What's important is how we use our time on this earth, not how conspicuously we give our money away. What's important is the energy and courage we are willing to expend reversing entropy, battling cynicism, suffering and challenging mediocre minds, staring down those who would trample our dreams, taking a stand for magic, and advancing the potential of the human race.

  Dan Pallotta

  Dream, Race, Giving

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• A poet, any real poet, is simply an alchemist who transmutes his cynicism regarding human beings into an optimism regarding the moon, the stars, the heavens, and the flowers, to say nothing of Spring, love, and dogs.

  George Jean Nathan

  Dog, Stars, Spring

  George Jean Nathan, Charles Angoff (1998). “The World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews, & Commentary”, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• Scepticism is a necessary and vital part of the journalist's toolkit. But when scepticism becomes cynicism it can close off thought and block the search for truth.

  Jeremy Paxman

  Block, Journalist, Search For Truth

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• What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.

  Abraham Verghese

  School, Sight, Empathy

  "'Literature about medicine may be all that can save us'" by Andrew Solomon, www.theguardian.com. April 22, 2016.

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• Obsessing on evil is boring. Rousing fear is a hackneyed shtick. Wallowing is despair is a bad habit. Indulging in cynicism is akin to committing a copycat crime.

  Rob Brezsny

  Fear, Evil, Despair

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• ... but a dream is nothing more than reality shorn of cynicism.

  Joseph Girzone

  Dream, Reality

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