Top 100 Cynic Quotes
#1. The only way to do my job without optimism would be as a cynic, and that's not my nature.
Jon Snow
#2. A cynic should never marry an idealist. For the cynic, marriage represents the welcome end of romantic life, with all its agony and ecstasy. But for the idealist, it is only the beginning.
Julie Burchill
#3. In the philosophical dialect, a cynic takes an insult as a compliment since opposition is already his style.
Criss Jami
#4. There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Maya Angelou
#5. The cynic about human nature might say that religious morality is an effective way of keeping people in line. The threat of hell, the reward of heaven, but the rules of the holy books are out of date and often barbaric.
Richard Dawkins
#6. I'm not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic - the part of you that you treasure most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact?
Kenneth Cain
#7. The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilised cynic to do other than worship it.
H.P. Lovecraft
#8. The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic.
Lord Chesterfield
#9. The best part of being a cynic is, you're rarely disappointed.
Myself
#11. It is interesting to observe what the Cynic teaching became when it was popularized. In the early part of the third century B.C., the cynics were the fashion, especially in Alexandria. They published little sermons pointing out how easy it is to do without material possessions,
Bertrand Russell
#12. The cynic sees the hat and coat, and thinks he sees the man. The sympathetic seer sees the man, and is not concerned with the hat and coat.
James Allen
#14. Even on especially hard days, I began to notice him everywhere, setting a table before me in the presence of my enemies, pursuing me with his love. Both the child and the cynic walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The cynic focuses on the darkness; the child focuses on the Shepherd.
Paul Miller
#15. A cynic sees little to admire in the world, while the world sees even less to admire in him.
Evan Esar
#16. A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye.
Carolyn Wells
#17. What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing.
Oscar Wilde
#18. An idealist believes that the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. - Sydney J. Harris
David Allen
#19. I am no nihilist. I am not even a cynic. I am, actually, rather romantic. And here's my idea of romance: You will soon be dead. Life will sometimes seem long and tough and, god, it's tiring. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you'll be
old. And then you'll be dead.
Tim Minchin
#20. What a cynic would call a coincidence, Amy called a clear answer, and more than an answer
a sign of the love of the Lord.
Elisabeth Elliot
#21. So, leave the cynics be. Out-cynic them. Step into that elsewhere. Believe that your story is bigger than yourself. In
Colum McCann
#22. Cynic' is a word invented by optimists to criticize realists.
Gregory Benford
#23. I vehemently deny that I was born a cynic and a pessimist.
J. Paul Getty
#24. A cynic is a kind of romantic who has aged.
John Updike
#25. For the cynic, art is defined through money. That, of course, is a very sad statement. But an artist is someone who does creative things.
Wolfgang Beltracchi
#26. Your such a cynic.
Exactly, thats what you call a guy who tells you the truth.
Martin Cruz Smith
#27. Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle.
Hugh MacLeod
#28. It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all.
H.P. Lovecraft
#29. A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset. Yes, there'll be more war ; and soon, I don't doubt. There always has been. There'll be deaths and disappointments and failures. When they come, you meet them.
James Gould Cozzens
#30. A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist.
Beau Willimon
#31. I'm cynical about society, politics, newspapers, government. But I'm not cynical about life, love, goodness, death. That's why I really don't want to be labeled a cynic.
John Lennon
#32. A cynic might conclude that the real purpose of the $500 million-a-year implant business is the implantation of fat in the bellies and rumps of underemployed plastic surgeons.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#33. He might have been naive, but he didn't care; he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic.
Colum McCann
#34. No man ever raised a monument to a cynic or wrote a poem about a man without faith.
Louis L'Amour
#35. I couldn't decide who was more annoying, the fanatic or the cynic.
Rick Yancey
#36. Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision
Rick Bayan
#37. The cynic makes fun of all earnestness; he makes fun of everything and everyone who feels that something can be done ... But in his heart of hearts he knows that he is a defeated man and that his cynicism is merely an expression of the fact that he has lost courage and is beaten.
George Edgar Vincent
#39. A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.
Wilbur Smith
#41. All the hate and scorn and love of a deep nature, such as the shy man is ever cursed by, fester and corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic.
Jerome K. Jerome
#42. Mockery is the sure mark of the cynic, unredeemed and cut off from salvation.
Janny Wurts
#43. The idea of The Boy Vs. The Cynic is the tension between the wide-eyed optimism in youthfulness where you think nothing can go wrong, I've got the world ahead of me. I'm gonna be a go-getter.
John Reuben Zappin
#44. You're such a cynic," Molly said. "I think cynics are playful and cute.
Jim Butcher
#46. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.
Henry Ward Beecher
#47. 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.
Matt Taibbi
#48. Loss either teaches you to persist in the face of suffering, or hardens you into a bitter cynic. Sometimes, it does a little of both.
Grace Slick
#49. Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce
#50. Scratch a cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist.
Jon F. Merz
#51. Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.
Colum McCann
#52. Don't let the cynic in you drown out the dreamer.
J.A. DeRouen
#53. It is impossible to be a cynic if you live a good deal with young people. Fundamentally, every young person has a feeling that the future is going to hold something of value.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#54. It takes a clever man to turn cynic and a wise man to be clever enough not to.
Fannie Hurst
#57. I don't think being a cynic is necessarily a negative thing. It's a matter of seeing the world with clear and open eyes.
Tom Tomorrow
#59. The warming springtime of human hope does not give in to the wintry smiles of the cynic and the realist; it blossoms and it perishes in the sad autumnal winds. And then it is born again - for ever and ever.
Richard Stites
#60. Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil.
Vachel Lindsay
#62. I married him against all evidence. I married him believing that marriage doesn't work, that love dies, that passion fades, and in so doing I became the kind of romantic only a cynic is truly capable of being.
Nora Ephron
#63. Progress is more of a challenge for the cynic but also more important and urgent, since for the optimist things aren't that bad and are bound to get better anyway.
Julian Baggini
#64. What I know is, you have a better chance in life-of surviving it-if you tolerate loss well;manage not to be a cynic through it all; ...
to connect the unequal things into a whole that preserves the good,even if the good is not simple to find. We try, as my sister said. We try.
Richard Ford
#65. Who was the cynic who had defined gratitude as thanks for favors to come?
Ursula Curtiss
#66. History is not "just one damn fact after another," as a cynic put it. There really are broad patterns to history, and the search for their explanation is as productive as it is fascinating.
Jared Diamond
#67. You're a cynic," Urgit accused.
Silk shook his head. "No, Your Majesty. I'm a realist.
David Eddings
#68. Every true heart needed a pragmatic counterweight, and every cynic an idealist to lift his spirits.
Neal Stephenson
#69. The cynic is goodhearted beneath his facade, whereas the sentimentalist is flint-hearted beneath his.
Sydney J. Harris
#70. I wasn't a cynic; I was a banged-up realist.
Wally Lamb
#71. Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch and the sinner his justification.
Helen Rowland
#72. Despite appearances I'm not a cynic. I'm a sarcastic pragmatist.
Stephen B5 Jones
#73. Optimism skipped out on the rent a while back, but the cynic in the penthouse won't leave until led out by marshals.
Colson Whitehead
#74. Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the market price of any single thing.
Oscar Wilde
#75. A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
Sydney J. Harris
#76. The only activity a cynic will find contagious is yawning, that is, with other people, at other people.
Criss Jami
#77. A journalist can not be a cynic, can not forget his humanity and that of the people he meets
Ryszard Kapuscinski
#78. An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
Sydney J. Harris
#79. The Trevanian Buff is a strange and wonderful creature: an outsider, a natural elitist, not so much a cynic as an idealist mugged by reality, not just one of those who march to a different drummer, but the solo drummer in a parade of one.
Trevanian
#80. I'm a very pragmatic soul. I'm part of the business and I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to being an over-believer in spiritual or in paranormal matters.
Jane Anderson
#81. Don't be a cynic, and bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. Set down nothing that will help somebody.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#83. The cynic suffers the form of faith without love. Incredulity is his piety.
James Richardson
#84. I'm disenchanted with Communism and most other things. I'm cynical but not a cynic. I'm cynical about TV, Congress, and commercial peanut butter.
Howard Fast
#85. Civilization is a fiction which becomes a fact only as long as everyone can believe in it. It is the cynic, rather than the rebel, who pulls down the whole flimsy structure periodically throughout history.
Helen McCloy
#86. The cynic sees only cynicism, the depressive can taint creation with one glance
Anna Funder
#88. The cynic who twitted Aristippus by observing that the philosopher who could dine on herbs might despise the company of a king, was well replied to by Aristippus, when he remarked that the philosopher who could enjoy the company or a king might also despise a dinner of herbs.
Charles Caleb Colton
#89. Only a cynic can create horror - for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving demonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.
Thomas Ligotti
#90. Possibly, some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, whatever our business or amusement
however serious, however trifling
all dance to one identical tune, and, in spite of our ridiculous activity, bring nothing finally to pass.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#92. The cynic finds love with the idealist. The rebel with the conformist. The social butterfly with the bookworm. They help each other balance their lives.
Joyce Brothers
#93. She smiled at him, though her hazel-green eyes were wary beneath the brim of a sodden hat. Right at that moment, staring at her across the hall, Gideon Shaw, cynic, hedonist, drunkard, libertine, fell hopelessly in love.
Lisa Kleypas
#94. Remember, beneath every cynic there lies a romantic, and probably an injured one.
Glenn Beck
#95. I'm a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.
Carl Icahn
#96. A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Shane Kuhn
#97. You lose a certain type of innocence when you experience this type of kindness. You lose your right to be a jaded cynic. You can no longer go back through the looking glass and pretend not to know what you know about kindness.
Rob Sheffield
#98. She might be a natural-born cynic, but she knew the right word when she heard it.
Kate DiCamillo
#99. She should not have taken any of these people at face value. She had been naive. But this conclusion, she realized, pointed unambiguously in the direction of cynicism. And she would not be a cynic. It was better to be naive, much better.
Alexander McCall Smith
#100. Do not hope; instead, observe were words that Flora, as a cynic, had found useful in the extreme. She repeated them to herself a lot.
Kate DiCamillo
