Quotes About Cynical

#1. One day I'm lugging walls back and forth in Louisville, and the next day I'm at Cannes giving interviews next to Ben Kingsley. I'm nowhere near cynical or jaded enough not to be incredibly thrilled by that.

Chris Eigeman

#2. What I'm trying to do is deliver results, not promises; results, not vision; results, not concepts. The world is cynical about IBM's promises.

Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

#3. We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we're faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.

Federico Fellini

#4. Religious practice in the Land of the Bible tends to encourage exclusivity and discrimination rather than love and magnanimity. There is no place like the Holy Land to make one cynical about religion.

Raja Shehadeh

#5. Taking down the Christmas tree makes it feel official: time to get back to joyless and cynical.

Greg Fitzsimmons

#6. Every day I read the newspapers, and no matter how cynical I get, it's imposssible to keep up.

Lily Tomlin

#7. An oxymoronic combination of the tough and tender, [Of Mice and Men] will appeal to sentimental cynics, cynical sentimentalists ... Readers less easily thrown off their trolley will still prefer Hans Andersen.
[Time 1937]

Time-Life Books

#8. At a time when opportunism is everything, when hope seems lost, when everything boils down to a cynical business deal, we must find the courage to dream. To reclaim romance. The romance of believing in justice, in freedom, and in dignity. For everybody.

Arundhati Roy

#9. Brecht was a cynical bohemian bogey of the middle classes, but also much more than a mere provocateur. He developed and dramatized his political knowledge in remarkable ways, and was an outspoken, radical opponent of the war, its nationalism and its capitalism

Harold Bloom

#10. It's an indication of how cynical our society has become that any kind of love story with a sad theme is automatically ridiculed as sentimental junk.

Winona Ryder

#11. I work hard to stay cynical enough! I keep my expectations of our culture and our leaders low, low, low, and I do it so I don't have to be let down. And yet again I am lowballed by the brokenness of the American cultural machine.

Vinnie Tesla

#12. I wanted to find a reason not to be cynical - to have some faith even when nothing around me seemed to justify it.

David Byrne

#13. I was never a liberal. I was radical. I was cynical. I was negative. But, I was never a liberal. I always saw that as too lukewarm for me.

Clarence Thomas

#14. The waking world. Even the most cynical among us must greet it with a touch of hope. Maybe it's a chemical reaction, our thoughts communing with sunrise and creating that brief, intense faith in newness.

David Levithan

#15. I'm not a huge fan of prequels and sequels and the cynical rush to make money on the back of books by other writers who are now dead.

Anthony Horowitz

#16. I had a direct experience of the efficacy of this form of mind-body medicine. This comes from somebody who had been sort of an alpha male, highly cynical war correspondent, who had basically seen it all and heard it all, was cynical and trusted nothing.

Brad Willis

#17. I had grown up during Vietnam. I had no connections to the U.S. military, and I had a pretty cynical default opinion about the U.S. military.

Sebastian Junger

#18. Perhaps the biggest myth about cynicism is that it deepens with age. I think what really happens is that experience painfully rips away layers of scales from our eyes, and so we do indeed become more cynical about many of the things we naively accepted when younger.

Julian Baggini

#19. I remember laughing when we made those slogans up [about abortion] ... We were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion. They were very cynical slogans then, just as all of these slogans today are very, very cynical.

Bernard Nathanson

#20. I believe that people, more often than not, act with the best possible intentions. And when they don't, that's funny to me. That's why comedy ends up seeming cynical, because you're talking about the gap between what people say and what they do.

Stephen Colbert

#21. I am not cynical. I am just old. I know what is going to happen next.

Fay Weldon

#22. We have never done anything in a cynical fake way

Gordon Ramsay

#23. Law enforcement hardened you. It made you cynical about people. Even people you loved. The people who deserved your unconditional trust.

Josh Lanyon

#24. For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more
remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#25. The only person more cynical than a drunk is a reformed drunk.

James Crumley

#26. We should take heart from our own experience and performance. In a cynical world we have become an inspiration to many.

Nelson Mandela

#27. It's what passes for wisdom, being ironic and cynical.

Barack Obama

#28. Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.

Erica Jong

#29. I would have never thought in a million years that I would appeal to an Avril fan. But I'm glad that I do because a lot of them aren't jaded or cynical.

Butch Walker

#30. People like Bill Maher, who brags about being a cynic, it sickens me. I am the least cynical person I know, and I am very, very skeptical.

Penn Jillette

#31. Still, it's a nice, cynical book for those who like atrocity scenes - starving prisoners forced to eat their girlfriends, etc.

H.P. Lovecraft

#32. The increasingly cynical court thought Arthur, hypocritical, as all decent men must be if you assume decency cannot exist.

T.H. White

#33. Films that are entertainments give simple answers but I think that's ultimately more cynical, as it denies the viewer room to think. If there are more answers at the end, then surely it is a richer experience.

Michael Haneke

#34. This may sound a cynical thing to say, but don't you think men sometimes leave difficulties to be solved by other people or to solve themselves? After

Barbara Pym

#35. I don't think I'm against all wars, but you'd have to have a damn good reason to send your son or daughter to fight, or to go yourself. So often, we are lied to and manipulated by our governments for their own very cynical reasons.

Paul Haggis

#36. It's that same quality I've been talking about. It's neither contrived, nor surprising and smart, not baffling, not witty, not interesting, not cynical, it can't be planned and it probably can't even be described. It's just good.

Gerhard Richter

#37. His joy was a release of Paul's conversion, not the heavy backslapping practical-joking humor of the Victorians, nor the cynical satire or the flippancy of the twenty first century mass media, just the gift of not taking himself or his adversaries too seriously.

John Charles Pollock

#38. 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

#39. The celebrity-chef thing, even at its worst, its most annoying, its silliest, its goofiest, its most egregious and cynical, has been a good thing.

Anthony Bourdain

#40. The young knowledge worker whose job is too small to challenge and test his abilities either leaves or declines rapidly into premature middle age, soured, cynical, unproductive.

Peter Drucker

#41. New York is hard, cynical, ruthless, even beyond other cities. From their early repression its children emerge sophisticated, both stunted and overdeveloped, perverted, premature, forced by the artificiality of their environment.

Ernest Gruening

#42. A twinge of wonderment that might charm the most cynical of New York dance fans ... They raise the bar, and then they jump over it.

Jennifer Dunning

#43. I think there are good men and women in all decades. We've grown cynical. And look at what we do to all our heroes: Churchill, FDR, Kennedy, they all had affairs. But heroic things happen every day.

Kevin Costner

#44. The worst thing that can happen in a democracy - as well as in an individual's life - is to become cynical about the future and lose hope.

Hillary Clinton

#45. Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.

Joe Klein

#46. A cynical plan has been launched in Ukraine to destroy this administration

Viktor Yushchenko

#47. Before children, even the most cynical people throw down their usual masks and become capable of feeling the purity and love which all human beings seek.

Sun Myung Moon

#48. Andy Stasiuk was a newsman of the old school of front-page journalism - tough, knowledgeable, cynical, single-minded and fun. He covered the news as a happy warrior in an era of cutthroat editorial competition.

Donald Newhouse

#49. You know, it's fashionable right now for people to be cynical. We go in cycles like this and right now a lot of people are saying, 'Oh, America is doing terribly' and 'What are we going to do?'

Barack Obama

#50. Because I was from the Midwest and untrained, I was completely open and ready to try anything. Many of my classmates were cynical and jaded; some already had conservatory training, and they were there simply to get that Yale stamp of approval, which they saw as a career stepping-stone.

Laila Robins

#51. Are you always so cynical?' said Angelica.
'No,' said Katherine. 'Sometimes I'm asleep.

Sam Byers

#52. I am an optimist even though I am told everything I do is negative and cynical.

Armando Iannucci

#53. Being just a little cynical will make you a much safer optimist.

Lisa Kleypas

#54. Of late, attempts have been made in the USA - at a high level and in a rather cynical form - to play the "Chinese card" against the USSR. This is a shortsighted and dangerous policy.

Leonid Brezhnev

#55. I think the people who are making Christmas-themed movies today feel that people are more cynical about Christmas. There's more of an edge.

Leonard Maltin

#56. I really ought to try and make a film that's a bit more cynical. But I don't think I'd know how to do it. I think what it is, is that if you're a film director, you're basically there because you enjoy manipulating people's emotions.

Nigel Cole

#57. I'm getting old, thought Eileen Calder. Old and worn out and cynical. And being cynical is a lot worse than being old or worn out.

Charles Sheffield

#58. Acting is something that I've done since I was so young. I always felt - certainly as a teenager - really cynical about acting. I definitely didn't feel like it was something I wanted to do, and so I really took it for granted.

Sarah Polley

#59. I'm the most cynical person, and I know what that sounds like when you say, I don't drink and drive, and I don't. But I know people look at that with skepticism, and I understand.

Tracey Gold

#60. I was expecting it to be cynical because I'm like that myself. I wouldn't want it to be all roses because life isn't like that.

Amy Winehouse

#61. I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.

Jonathan Coe

#62. You're all terrified of young people. We remind you of what it was like to have ideals, faith, freedom. We remind you of the losses you've taken as you've grown cynical, numb, disenchanted, compromising the life you imagined.

Stephanie Danler

#63. In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious.

Michael Shermer

#64. I've actually always wanted to write like a one-person show that was sort of a romantic comedy - a show that was kind of cynical about romance and marriage but ultimately embraced it. Because I feel like comedy is always cynical, inherently, because it's contrarian.

Mike Birbiglia

#65. To acclimate students to misery under the rubric that so doing prepares them for life is a cynical notion - and a horrifying one.

David Guterson

#66. I've always liked to be a meat and potatoes kind of actor who doesn't believe in any of the highfalutin stuff about acting, so I tend to be a little bit more cynical.

Anthony Hopkins

#67. WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. In our youth, if we survive them, they're called learning experiences or teachable moments or some-such. And that which does not maim or kill us usually makes us stronger, albeit sometimes also sadder and more cynical.

Charles Stross

#68. I think we need to find out why the citizens of the world's wealthiest, most envied, most powerful country are so cynical, so distressed, so angry, so ticked of about so many things.

William Bennett

#69. I can say that even in the midst of my most cynical comic stripping: Opus shone through with a bit of heart, anchoring the ugly proceedings with a comforting pull of emotion.

Berkeley Breathed

#70. The Carrie in the plot was too much like the Carrie in the book. She smoked, she swore a lot, she was very hard, very cynical. I could never have pulled it off.

Kristin Davis

#71. You know, many people have called me, friends from the nationalist camp, revisionists and so on, from around the world, have called me over the years - and now again because of what happened - and they are all very cynical about the police and the authorities.

Ernst Zundel

#72. My brother and I both like sarcastic, insulting comedy, so that's a way we communicate. Somehow that's what we learned. My mom is not a really sarcastic person. She's a really sort of overly loving person, and my brother and I came out little cynical bastards.

Moshe Kasher

#73. People think it's easy to be cynical and pessimistic, but it's incredibly hard work. It's much easier to be hopeful.

Michael Robotham

#74. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity & disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Max Ehrmann

#75. It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.

Marie-Louise Von Franz

#76. Promising something that seems popular at the time that you know you're never going to deliver - that's the kind of cynical politics that I don't want any part of.

Justin Trudeau

#77. People tend to become cynical about even the most appalling crisis if it seems to be dragging on, failing to come to term.

Susan Sontag

#78. This notion that's peddled by the religious right - that they are oppressed is not true. Sometimes it's a cynical ploy to move their agenda ahead. The classic example being that somehow secularists are trying to eliminate Christmas, which strikes me as some kind of manufactured controversy.

Barack Obama

#79. George Bush and John Ashcroft were religious in a scary way, but the rational among us could always take heart that, deep down, the Bush administration was more cynical than messianic.

Matt Taibbi

#80. For better or for worse, I've watched people die in front of me. I see how they are in the end. And they're not cynical. In the end, they wanna hold somebody's hand. And that's real to me.

Mitch Albom

#81. I think of myself as writing realist American fiction. 'Cynical but hopeful' wouldn't be the worst thing I've ever been called.

Walter Kirn

#82. Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

Erica Jong

#83. 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

#84. It is time to let America be America again. To return freedom to the people. To stand on our founding principles and reject the cynical politics of the Nanny State.

Rick Perry

#85. The cynical, caustic, acid-tongued New York drama critic Addison De Witt introduces his protege/date of the moment, a bimbo date and so-called actress named Miss Casswell (Marilyn Monroe) in another very famous line: "Miss Casswell is an actress, a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art."

George Sanders

#86. Cynical, hell. I'm a healthy old man with a constitutional mistrust of paternalism and government in large doses.

Harper Lee

#87. We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.

Lionel Trilling

#88. People grow bitter and cynical about life because they can't bend it to their will.

Marty Rubin

#89. Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss

Helen Fielding

#90. Law and freedom must be indivisible partners. For without law, there can be no freedom, only choas and disorder; and without freedom, law is but a cynical veneer for injustice and oppression.

Ronald Reagan

#91. Many saints were made out of passionate sinners - the angry, the hating, the lustful, the cynical; but none were ever made out of the slothful.

Peter Kreeft

#92. We are cynical about our own species, but less so about animals, especially wild ones. We might not shelter them from habitat destruction, but we do tend to shelter them from excessive irony.

Yann Martel

#93. The girls said she was too cynical about love, but how could you not be? On the surface, relations between men and women were all soft kisses and white gowns and hand-holding. But underneath they were a scary, complicated, ugly mess, just waiting to rise to the surface.

J. Courtney Sullivan

#94. The only thing I think that is wrong with modern gaming now is the free-to-play stuff on mobile phones. I think it's very cynical and cold and weird.

Markus Persson

#95. You kind of have to have a cynical thing sometimes.

Richard Patrick

#96. A cynical type might suggest that it was all a little too perfect. But a cynical type would be wrong.

Marian Keyes

#97. I've been a politician and so I'm sometimes cynical about what politicians won't do. When I hear a politician say something that makes no sense whatsoever, I think there's one of two things there: There's money or the promise of money.

Allan Boesak

#98. If you're constantly stepping outside of the character and judging them, you'll never really be able to fully engage because you'll always be slightly cynical.

James Norton

#99. It's very easy to be cynical about the hall of fame. But on the other hand, it's really a beautiful thing for someone like me. I dedicated my entire life to this music.

Tom Petty

#100. E is betrayed by the cynical sparkle of her eyes, by her sophisticated look. Real ladies do not know the price of things, they like adorable follies; their eyes are like beautiful, hothouse flowers.

Jean-Paul Sartre