Top 77 Cynicism Quotes

Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts.

Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.

In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

I was a bit of a humour black sheep. I would make these jokes full of irony and dark cynicism and that just didn’t work when I was seven, people did not laugh.

The creative people I admire seem to share many characteristics: A fierce restlessness. Healthy cynicism. A real world perspective. An ability to simplify. Restraint. Patience. A genuine balance of confidence and insecurity. And most importantly, humanity.

After years of police work, officers often can’t help but be influenced by the cynicism they feel.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Nevertheless, I resist cynicism and continue to believe in the possibilities for genuine democracy.

Scepticism and cynicism about politics is so great that one of the best counters to it is what you can do at a local level.

I don’t think you lead by pessimism and cynicism. I think you lead by optimism and enthusiasm and energy.

Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.

Big business increasingly likes to portray itself as socially concerned, adopting the style of civic action through ‘campaigns’ of varying degrees of cynicism.

I don’t think you can ever be ahead of your time with cynicism about that subject. No, I don’t think it was ahead of its time. I think it was very much a product of its time.

For me, ‘Jewishness’ manifests within my humor, slang, cynicism, culinary tastes, and the spirit of generosity ingrained in me.

I’m an optimistic person, and I tend to bury my cynicism in what I read and the movies I watch. My optimism holds that the good guys eventually come out on top.

Another cause for the increase in alienation and cynicism is a feeling that too many policy decisions that affect individuals have been taken out of any system that has accountability or that they can influence.

If only media people would stop reaching for the low-hanging fruit, which is cynicism and pessimism, and stopped trying so hard to be hip and cool and have a swagger.

What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it – the process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialized language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.

In government, you are pressed by the security agencies. They come to you with very good information, and they say, ‘You need to do something.’ So you do need the breath of scepticism, not cynicism, breathing on them.

I have no cynicism at all.

Books of yesterday are often criticised as offering an unrealistic Pollyanna view of the world. But the grim ‘realities’ we are forcing on today’s children seem to have been written with no higher purpose in mind than teaching cynicism and distrust.

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we’re lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it’s worse than fear – it’s active disengagement.

I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.

There’s a distinct unease about Americans when they are outside the United States. I can’t say quite what it is, but they are easily spooked or driven to cynicism – the country is diverse but, paradoxically, extremely insular.

I’ve got rid of a lot of cynicism and anger. I feel positive about my development, and I just want to carry on making music and building myself as a person.

I read some of my stories recently and thought, ‘How in the hell did I get away with that?’ I had some really raw cynicism in some of them.

This isn’t really a convention, This is really an infomercial. And every night we’ll have a different infomercial and people view it with a certain level of cynicism.

This business is ephemeral, and you have to maintain a healthy cynicism about it. There’s a ‘flavour of the month’ aspect to it, so you have to keep moving on and mutating.

Reject cynicism. Reject certitude. And don’t be a jerk. Be a good guy.

I think that the worst form of naivete can be extreme cynicism. If you think that nobody comes to Washington to do any good whatsoever, that is almost as bad as being starry-eyed and thinking that they are all here to advance democracy.

We will need to work hard to break the cynicism, talk straight and rebuild trust in politics.

For me, the more I think about the problems of the world, I feel I have to be positive. I wouldn’t like to fall into cynicism or nihilism. That’s not in my nature.

Anything that has cynicism to it and that’s jaded is smutty.

Cynicism lost and hope won. For the first time, the government of Quebec will be led by a woman.

Without the confidence to know our democracy is functioning properly, we risk more disillusionment, more cynicism, and even more public apathy toward the entire system.

I think there’s a weapon of cynicism to say, ‘Protest doesn’t work. Organizing doesn’t work. Y’all are a bunch of hippies. You know, it doesn’t do anything,’ because, frankly, it’s said out of fear, because it is a potent force for political change.

I hate cynicism – it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere.

Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they’re doing – this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.

Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages, the abstraction known as ‘the intelligent layperson’ does exist – in the form of millions of folks with a passionate commitment to continuous learning.

Cynicism is something which has become symbolic of imperial policy.

Don’t give in to cynicism. It is a toxic spiritual state.

Cynicism means the conduit to the soul has a great kink in it, like a garden hose in which nothing flows in either direction.

I don’t want to sound like the old guy, but cynicism is a potential danger. It colors our way of looking at the world.

I think I would have been a totally different kind of writer if I’d gone to England. I might have developed a cynicism about my origins, a belittling of them, or an excessive nostalgia for them.

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple’s substitute for intelligence.

Kennedy was like a rock star. Carter was the earnest outsider at the height of Washington cynicism. Clinton was a bad boy who proposed his ‘third way’ of Democratic politics, and Obama brought hope and change to a country that so desperately needed it.

Distrust of government isn’t baseless cynicism. It’s realism.

If there’s one thing that makes me cynical, it’s optimists. They are just far too cynical about cynicism. If only they could see that cynics can be happy, constructive, even fun to hang out with, they might learn a thing or two.

The 20th century has been marked by cynicism, selfishness, greed, and the desire to please, all without changing the status quo. In the 21st century, we must resurrect solidarity and compassion.

Cynicism is intellectual treason.

Maybe I am naive, but I don’t think talking about the Holocaust with total and complete cynicism is possible for Israeli politicians. It’s inevitable that the Holocaust is part of Israeli politics.

In the 1950s, the average person saw science as something that solved problems. With the advent of nuclear weapons and pollution, the idealistic aura around scientific research has been replaced by cynicism.

I like quips. I like whiffs of cynicism and I think they can be witty. But I don’t really know where wittiness is constructive.

Our line of work is very cynical, and a lot of it is driven by cynicism, cruelty, and meanness. It’s easier to believe the negative stuff than the positive stuff. The feel-good stories don’t usually spend a lot of time on the front pages.

I think that the memory of Armenia’s genocide opened my eyes at an early age to the existence of political cynicism.

I have a lot of friends that take that position of extreme cynicism, and I just can’t let myself go to that place. It’s just too easy, and it’s just too defeatist.

However vain our entire political class or organizations are, in the name of cynicism we cannot bend towards authoritarian populism.

The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.

I think a lot of cynicism has dropped away from my shoulders since I stopped drinking.

A superhero is someone who, at some point or in some way, inspires hope or is the enemy of cynicism.

I honestly expected me learning Welsh to be met with a certain amount of cynicism, even outright hostility from some. But that hasn’t happened.

That’s one of the great gifts of this, the greatest of all games, baseball: it allows you, still, to lose yourself in a dream, to feel and remember a season of life when summer never seemed to die and the assault of cynicism hadn’t begun to batter optimism.

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.