Cynicism Quotes

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of telling the truth. (Lillian Hellman)
Cynicism is humour in ill health. View quote
H. G. Wells
Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness. View quote
Leon Trotsky
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. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
Cynicism is intellectual treason. View quote
Norman Cousins
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. View quote
George Bernard Shaw
The only deadly sin I know is cynicism. View quote
Henry L. Stimson
Cynicism is intellectual dandyism. View quote
George Meredith
The worst cynicism: a belief in luck. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
It is a testament to our naïveté about culture that we think that we can change it by simply declaring new values. Such declarations usually produce only cynicism. View quote
Peter Senge
Giving full rein to one‘s cynicism as one goes along produces a normal outlet and maintains an emotional equilibrium. (S. S. Van Dine)
I don't think you lead by pessimism and cynicism. I think you lead by optimism and enthusiasm and energy. View quote
Patricia Ireland
There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today's pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent. View quote
Charles Krauthammer
Cynicism is cheap-you can buy it at any Monoprix store-it's built into all poor-quality goods. View quote
Graham Greene
I can never get used to the fact, though I know it, that women are born cynics. Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it... View quote
George Bernard Shaw
What all this posturing and fake glamor results in is a vast detachment and cynicism on the part of the artists. Since it's impossible to have respect for an audience that'll take just about anything you care to dish out, and the impassive demeanor is so central to the role, a general numbnose is all that can be expected. View quote
Lester Bangs
I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope – an impotence, in short and to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all... View quote
John Fowles
Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it. View quote
Erica Jong
We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism. View quote
Camille Paglia
Cynicism is only intellectual sloth. (Henry Rollins)
We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion - a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life. View quote
Terry Pratchett
To give this activity even covert support is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world-nor on our own consciences. View quote
J. William Fulbright
In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug and we shall want to live more musically. View quote
Vincent van Gogh