Quotes About Cynicism

There is no power in cynicism. There is no forward thrust in cynicism.

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.

Most cynics are really crushed romantics: they've been hurt, they're sensitive, and their cynicism is a shell that's protecting this tiny, dear part in them that's still alive.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Optimism is a political act. Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience.

Millions of small changes can be done, and through that, there can be a bigger impact because anybody can talk to another person. Anybody can educate somebody if they feel like their neighbor is stupid. It's more like "Educate thy neighbor, my friend." I think that enthusiasm, and not giving into lazy-minded cynicism, is where the potential and hope is.

I get the cynicism thing all the time, although I don't really know where that comes from, because I think I'm actually the opposite of a cynic.

Giving full rein to one's cynicism as one goes along produces a normal outlet and maintains an emotional equilibrium.

The church seeks to help form people who can risk being peaceful in a violent world, risk being kind in a competitive world, risk being faithful in an age of cynicism, risk being gentle among those who admire the tough, risk love when it may not be returned, because we have the confidence that in Christ we have been reborn into a new reality.

Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension, and even anger.

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.

Do not crush the flowers of wisdom with the hobnail boots of cynicism.

I've done four records now, and your idea of what it's going to be for that record is never what it ends up being, so there's cynicism in my outlook but there's also some positive outlook in it, like, "I can't really control anything outside of what it is that I do, so I'm going to do my very best and put my best foot forward in everything that I do." The music and whatever else comes outside of that, if something great comes out of it, awesome, if not, I'm going to make another record and another one after that. That's really all I can do.

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

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

Some reviewers have read this as cynicism but I don't see it that way. When I say "I am so sick / of pretending to be me," it's exhaustion at the everyday performance, in life, in art, even in our most intimate encounters.

I understand the concept of optimism. But I think with me what you get is a lack of cynicism.

The worst thing about cynicism is its truth.

If youre going to reach for it, reach all the way for it. Albums like Purple Rain and Thriller and those kind of records, you had to reach far above the din of cynicism and modern living to get to that place, against all the odds.

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.

Cynicism is humor in ill health.

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.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.

I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all.

There is an institutional cynicism that causes reporters to question everything the President says, and the motives of everything the President and his Administration try to accomplish.

I think the most dangerous influence for a young writer is to be treated with cynicism or discouragement.

You happened to me,You scare me to death, you know. When you stormed into my life, you turned everything inside out. You upset all the things I believed about myself and made me think in new ways. I know who I used to be, but I’m finally ready to figure out who I am. Cynicism gets tiring, Isabel, and you’ve . . . rested me.And don’t you dare tell me you’ve stopped loving me back, because you’re still a better person than I am, and I’m counting on you to take more care with my heart than I took with yours.

Realism has always been called cynicism.

The cynic sees only cynicism, the depressive can taint creation with one glance

The Nigerian storyteller Ben Okri says that ‘In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted — knowingly or unknowingly — in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.’

Promise me, man. If anything ever happens to me, promise me you'll take care of Angelina. She's something special, Micah. Heart way too big for her own good. I worry because she doesn't see everyone for who they are. She's too busy looking for the good. I've tried to get her to adopt some cynicism, but the truth of the matter is, she wouldn't be the same girl if she did.

Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try. ---in Good Housekeeping