Top 200 Cynical Quotes

British culture is very cynical sometimes of overt displays of sentimentality, and I think that becomes almost a suspicion of emotion, or a suspicion of someone making a grand statement. It is always easier to be ironic, or ‘meta’, or coolly postmodern. But I think there is such a thing as authentic sentimentality.

Being cynical isn’t necessarily being negative or bitter. It’s a person who is wary of mistaking love for something that it’s not and getting their heart broken.

America’s habit of distilling vicious, pitiless, cynical reality into a morality play can be an oasis.

I am not into marriage. You look at all the marriages breaking down and all the people cheating on their marriages, and you become cynical. Marriage is nothing but a label.

I oscillate between being cynical and being naive on a regular basis. I always think that not much shocks me until something much too obvious does.

I’m not easily wound up, but overly cynical people irritate me.

Psychologists even have a term for this: they talk about ‘mean world syndrome’. People who have just seen too much of the news have become more cynical, more pessimistic, more anxious, even more depressive. So, yeah, I think that is something you need to be wary of.

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.

I’m not the type of guy who enjoys one-night stands. It leaves me feeling very empty and cynical. It’s not even fun sexually. I need to feel something for the woman and entertain the vain hope that it may lead to a relationship.

The rest of the band had a cynical view towards the way ‘Tusk’ was made and the reasons why I thought it was important to move into new territory. It wasn’t just negativity. There was open hostility. Then I got a certain amount of flak because it didn’t sell as many as ‘Rumours.’

Avoid cynical and negative people like the plague. They are killers of potential.

I would say most comedians have a very cynical worldview of the way the world can work. It’s almost like if you didn’t, you couldn’t be a comedian.

I’m not cynical.

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.

I never felt cynical, and I never felt that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do.

For the Russians, the displacement of the Holocaust is calculated and cynical. It’s not emotional; they don’t care about the Holocaust one way or another. They only care about it insofar as they can use it to manipulate a German sense of guilt.

People are getting cynical about the news. It doesn’t seem like there’s one place to watch where you get the straight dope. You watch the channel that proves your point.

I’m cynical by nature, but I am also very hopeful because I see people from the Left and the Right showing up to these tea parties. You have people, bikers, union members and guys in three-piece suits showing up to these things.

I directed Bebe Neuwirth in ‘Here Lies Jenny’ at the Post Street Theatre. I was gobsmacked – the audiences were extremely knowledgeable, affectionate, interested, and not cynical.

I’m not a particularly shiny, happy person. I’m fairly cynical, and that’s what draws me to comedy.

The architects of Brexit are a cocktail of lying racists and buffoons. I don’t think even someone as cynical as me could have predicted how deeply stupid these people are.

If Mitt Romney defeats President Obama in his bid for reelection on Tuesday, it will mark the success of one of the most deeply cynical political campaigns in American history. It is hard to beat an incumbent no matter the economic climate.

I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don’t hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory.

What a thing, Europe. Europe! The cultured Europe! We are the barbarians, the Indians, the blacks, the southerners. How cynical is Europe. Chavez the tyrant! Chavez the strongman! Chavez, who wants to stay forever. While there, they have kings, my friend!

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.

I hate when people say, ‘Oh, they laughed all the way to the bank.’ That’s nonsense because the most cynical, unhappy people are Hollywood screenwriters. They earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for work that’s never made.

I don’t like post-modernism. It’s cynical, and takes no discipline – you just copy. It doesn’t allow a film to be open to reality.

I do get cynical, but what can you do? It doesn’t make any difference.

Love at first sight is probably for stupid people, but maybe I’m just cynical.

You’re more inclined to be cynical about your own country, and you romanticize it from the outside. And why not? It’s much more interesting than thinking, ‘Oh, everyone’s struggling and normal.’

Most of the writers in TV are from L.A. or New York, and those are places where people are cynical and snarky. And they fly from L.A. to New York in an airplane over this vast, expansive land where people aren’t snarky; they’re a lot more like the ‘Parks and Rec’ characters.

I like to think my sense of humor is sort of smart and dumb at the same time. I like to work on multiple levels – smart and dumb, funny and sad, profound and mundane, cynical and hopeful.

I’m rather cynical about the way the honours system is used, frankly. A whole lot of the honours system is used for political purposes by the government in power.

Anyone concerned with the broken politics in Washington needs to look no further than Mitch McConnell’s cynical manipulation of the rules and obstruction of the NLRB.

Snark describes a cynical position, and I’m not interested in that.

We need to defend principles like democracy, freedom of speech, gender equality, and the rule of law through exemplifying these on a global scale, not through the same cynical, isolationist policies which have eroded these so-called ‘British’ values across the rest of the world.

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

Some people might have different ideas about what progress looks like, and some are cynical and place their short-term political interests ahead of what is good for our country. But many of them aren’t cynical and try hard to do their best.

I’d never allow myself to imagine winning the World Cup. Cynical me!

Alan Alda is a dear friend, nothing like the cynical, bitter Hawkeye.

I think you can be cynical about religion on occasion, and certainly skeptical about the degree to which some people use religion to manipulate other people.

It’s hard to reinvent the wheel with a cop show. But ‘Rookie Blue’ has a pure emotional center that’s not cynical.

You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today.

I always learn a lot when I do so. You know, when you step out of your comfort zone and even your cynical zone, and open yourself up to what other people might experience and why they do so.

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.

Canadians are tired of being cynical.

The world is cynical and sarcastic, but that doesn’t mean that that’s always the truth.

Claiming that Social Security benefits are safe may sound naive, but my view is actually quite cynical. I believe that as long as the elderly continue to vote in large numbers, no Congress will renege on promised payouts for those already eligible to receive benefits.

The use of music in ‘Gloria’ is not cynical.

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.

You’ve got to be strong enough for love. It’s very easy to be cool and cynical. It’s very difficult to just let yourself go and be in love. You’ve got to be strong enough for that.

You can’t blame anyone for being cynical about politicians.

We have for the past year and undoubtedly will be for the next year, dealing with an electorate that is more alienated and more cynical than at any point in modern time.

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.

It’s easier to be cynical and edgy and tough rather than overly emotional.

Hillary Clinton became secretary of state under Barack Obama. It’s hard to convey just how stunningly cynical she has been on Colombia: In 2008, running against Obama, she opposed, in unambiguous terms, a free-trade deal with Colombia.

It would be a sad day if we British stopped being cynical, but you sometimes wonder whether we overdo it.