Cynicism Quotes - Page 8

• I feel increasingly like age is very irrelevant. Quite often, cynicism is confused with wisdom, and my scorn is confused with a knowing, which I don't have.

  Laura Marling

  Confused, Knowing, Age

  "Laura Marling: 'I increasingly feel like age is irrelevant'". Interview with Killian Fox, www.theguardian.com. December 1, 2011.

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• Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.

  Frank Herbert

  Kindness, Cruelty, Thrive

  Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.434, Penguin

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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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• A dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit.

  Cecil B. DeMille

  Agents, Dozen, Spirit

  "Sunset Boulevard", www.imdb.com. 1950.

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• A learned County Court judge in a book of memoirs recently said that the overwhelming amount of his time on the bench was taken up with people who are persuaded by persons whom they do not know to enter into contracts that they do not understand to purchase goods that they do not want with money that they have not got.

  Wilfred Greene, 1st Baron Greene

  Book, Taken, Court Judges

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• All lies are told with a straight face. It is truth that's said with a dismissive giggle.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Lying, Faces, Said

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer”, p.88, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Cynicism and skepticism are the crudest form of quasi-intellectualism... Let the cynic become cynical of his cynicism and the skeptic skeptical of his skepticism and join the battle.

  R. C. Sproul

  Cynical, Battle, Form

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• Buying a lie is one thing, giving it away for free is quite another.

  Douglas Horton

  Lying, Giving, Buying

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• You see, in this world there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons.

  Jean Renoir

  World, Reason, Terrible

  "Jean Renoir: essays, conversations, and reviews".

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• Live to learn, learn to live, then teach others.

  Douglas Horton

  Cooperation, Teach, Altruism

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• The art of giving is perfected through anonymity.

  Douglas Horton

  Art, Giving, Anonymity

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• The relationship between truth and a newspaper is like the relationship between the color green and the number seven. Occasionally you will see the number seven written in green, but you learn not to expect this.

  Garrison Keillor

  Color, Numbers, Green

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• The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random.

  Andre Breton

  Gun, Hands, Surrealism

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• Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if you run out of food.

  Dean McLaughlin

  Running, Shelter, Welcome

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• "Pay him what was promised", said the caliph. "And put out his eyes."

  John Brunner

  Eye, Cynical, Pay

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• Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Cynical, Adultery, Stage

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• The management system which makes only a pretense of valuing employee involvement and encouraging employee empowerment merely breeds cynicism.

  George E. P. Box

  Cynical, Empowerment, Management

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• Writing, therefore, is also an act of courage. How much easier is it to lead an unexamined life than to confront yourself on the page? How much easier is it to surrended to materialism or cynicism or to a hundred other ways of life that are, in fact, ways to hide from life and from our fears. When we write, we resist the facile seduction of theses simpler roads. We insist on finding out and declaring the truths that we find, and we dare to out those truths on the page.

  Jack Heffron

  Writing, Pages, Way

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• It is part of the business of marketing to muddy the distinction between altruism and cynicism.

  Don Watson

  Marketing, Language, Distinction

  Don Watson (2006). “Death Sentences: How Cliches, Weasel Words and Management-Speak Are Strangling Public Language”, Gotham

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• Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq - mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of state-run Arab media and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them.

  Victor Davis Hanson

  Running, Reality, Media

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• As consumers we are incredibly discerning, we sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed.

  Jonathan Ive

  Design, Greed, Care

  "Sir Jonathan Ive: The iMan cometh". Interview with Mark Prigg, www.standard.co.uk. March 12, 2012.

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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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• The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true."

  James Branch Cabell

  Tunnels, Light, Track

  The Silver Stallion bk. 4, ch. 26 (1926) See Leibniz 3; Voltaire 7; Voltaire 8

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• I think utopianism and eschatology are really two sides of the same coin. They both assume that some massively transformative event is going to happen that's going to completely change the nature of society. They only disagree on whether we get a happy ending or all die horribly. And so utopianism is on the wane right now because at the moment most of the plausible candidates for huge historical transformation look like they're going to kill us.

  Phillip Sandifer

  Thinking, Two Sides, Historical

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• The artist who really loves people loves them so well the way they are he sees no need to disguise their characteristics-he loves them whole, without retouching. Yet the word used for this unqualifying affection is 'cynicism'.

  Dawn Powell

  Artist, People, Needs

  Dawn Powell (1998). “The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965”, Zoland Books

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