68 Quotes On Cynicism

In a world that often oscillates between idealism and skepticism, cynicism finds a comfortable seat at the table of human experience. It's the lens through which many view the complexities and contradictions of life, offering sharp insights and sometimes biting commentary. Whether you view cynicism as a protective armor or a barrier to openness, its undeniable influence stretches across literature, philosophy, and everyday conversation. In this carefully curated collection, we delve into the wit and wisdom encapsulated in 68 noteworthy quotes on cynicism. Through them, you’ll uncover the sharp observations and enduring truths about this uniquely human perspective. Prepare to be amused, provoked, and perhaps even challenged as we explore the intricate tapestry woven by cynical thought.

1. “All I have to be thankful for in this world is that I was sitting down when my garter busted.” - Dorothy Parker

2. “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.” - Terry Pratchett

3. “Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn't the faintest idea what the heck is really going on.” - Mike Royko

4. “Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be.” - Ambrose Bierce

5. “By the time you swear you're his,Shivering and sighing.And he vows his passion is,Infinite, undying.Lady make note of this --One of you is lying.” - Dorothy Parker

6. “Life is serious but art is fun!” - John Irving

7. “Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try. ---in Good Housekeeping” - Peggy Noonan

8. “I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!” - Jean Anouilh

9. “If you behaved nicely, the communists wouldn't exist.” - Jenny Holzer

10. “Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.” - George Carlin

11. “Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.” - Bergen Evans

12. “In Paris, where raillery is so quick to throw emotion out the window, silence, in a roomful of clever people after a story, is the most flattering of all marks of success” - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

13. “One simple answer is that there has been a massive rise in the incidence of sanctimony and smugness among the successful that has nothing to do with any change in the underlying reality. Rather, it has been stimulated by politicians who have realized that it is possible to win power by recruiting the most economically successful forty per cent or so of the population in a crusade to roll back the gains made by their fellow citizens in the previous forty years. And how better to rationalize this than to tell people that they deserve the incomes that the market generates?” - Brian Barry

14. “Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.” - Michael Crichton

15. “The real inferiority of women to men is shown by their hate of paederasty, which they regard as unfair competition. Men on the other hand rather approve of Sapphism, as saving them trouble & expense.—Aleister Crowley. 1929-03-09 diary entry.” - Lawrence Sutin

16. “I fight cynicism. It`s too easy. It`s really boring. It`s much harder to be positive and see the wonder of everything. Cynicism is a bunch of people who aren`t as talented as other people, knocking them because they make them feel even more untalented.” - Ewan McGregor

17. “All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.” - Conan O'Brien

18. “Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it.” - Walter M. Miller Jr.

19. “The atmosphere was electrified by the orgasm with which the strong and secure are overcome when confronted with the visible frailty of someone worse off than themselves.” - Paul Leppin

20. “Life seemed to him to be a narrow cage, and her iron bars were many and dense, and there was only one way out.” - Leonid Andreyev

21. “motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.” - Frank Herbert

22. “Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.” - Stephen Colbert

23. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money. I Corinthians xiii (adapted) ” - George Orwell

24. “Cynicism was a one-way path, and once taken the way back was lost forever.” - Chris Wooding

25. “Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.” - Joseph Heller

26. “A politician is a politician whether he's wearing a suit or a funny hat.” - Reza Aslan

27. “Uncouth, clannish, lumbering about the confines of Space and Time with a puzzled expression on his face and a handful of things scavenged on the way from gutters, interglacial littorals, sacked settlements and broken relationships, the Earth-human has no use for thinking except in the service of acquisition. He stands at every gate with one hand held out and the other behind his back, inventing reasons why he should be let in. From the first bunch of bananas, his every sluggish fit or dull fleabite of mental activity has prompted more, more; and his time has been spent for thousands of years in the construction and sophistication of systems of ideas that will enable him to excuse, rationalize, and moralize the grasping hand.His dreams, those priceless comic visions he has of himself as a being with concerns beyond the material, are no more than furtive cannibals stumbling round in an uncomfortable murk of emotion, trying to eat each other. Politics, religion, ideology — desperate, edgy attempts to shift the onus of responsibility for his own actions: abdications. His hands have the largest neural representation in the somesthetic cortex, his head the smallest; but he's always trying to hide the one behind the other.” - M. John Harrison

28. “Si la cursilería fuera un pecado, yo cada noche me ganaría el infierno.” - Xavier Velasco

29. “Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.” - Peter Senge

30. “Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.” - Kingsley Amis

31. “Sometimes I think books are the only friends worth having.” - Susie Derkins

32. “If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves?” - Alain De Botton

33. “But with man the case is otherwise, in that when logic leads to any humiliating conclusion, the sole effect is to discredit logic.” - James Branch Cabell

34. “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.” - Leon Trotsky

35. “It seems all spirits need theatrics, eh? Even Christ himself requires incense and holy water. We're a skeptical people. We need convincing.” - Megan Chance

36. “Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.” - Glen Cook

37. “A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.” - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

38. “He see's the world the way cynics do; Not looking for false Hope.” - Meredith Duran

39. “The only activity a cynic will find contagious is yawning, that is, with other people, at other people.” - Criss Jami

40. “It all depends on what people you're talking about helping. That's the wonderful think about just about every religion on the planet - they're all so incredibly selfish.” - Derek Landy

41. “It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption.” - H. Rider Haggard

42. “Maybe it's the fact the most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip - and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendant horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete.” - David Foster Wallace

43. “The fucking world is running out of gas.” - John Updike

44. “It's weird, marriage. It's like this license that gives a person the legal right to control their spouse / their 'other half.” - Jess C. Scott

45. “I am a citizen of the world.” - Diogenes of Sinope

46. “It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.” - Diogenes of Sinope

47. “Cynicism is no more mature than naïveté. You're no more mature, just more burned.” - Karl Marlantes

48. “To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this:1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason.2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right.3. Charity is immoral.4. Pay for your own fucking schools.” - Matt Taibbi

49. “Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself,' said Denethor. 'Have I not tasted it now many nights upon my tongue, foreboding that worse lay in the dregs?” - J.R.R. Tolkien

50. “Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.” - Alain De Botton

51. “Cynicism creates a numbness toward life.Cynicism begins with a wry assurance that everyone has an angle. Behind every silver lining is a cloud. The cynic is always observing, critiquing, but never engaging, loving, and hoping....To be cynical is to be distant. While offering a false intimacy of being "in the know," cynicism actually destroys intimacy. It leads to bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit....Cynicism begins, oddly enough, with too much of the wrong kind of faith, with naive optimism or foolish confidence. At first glance, genuine faith and naive optimism appear identical since both foster confidence and hope.But the similarity is only surface deep.Genuine faith comes from knowing my heavenly Father loves, enjoys, and cares for me. Naive optimism is groundless. It is childlike trust without the loving Father....Optimism in the goodness of people collapses when it confronts the dark side of life....Shattered optimism sets us up for the fall into defeated weariness and, eventually, cynicism. You'd think it would just leave us less optimistic, but we humans don't do neutral well. We go from seeing the bright side of everything to seeing the dark side of everything. We feel betrayed by life....The movement from naive optimism to cynicism is the new American journey. In naive optimism we don't need to pray because everything is under control. In cynicism we can't pray because everything out of control, little is possible.With the Good Shepherd no longer leading us through the valley of the shadow of death, we need something to maintain our sanity. Cynicism's ironic stance is a weak attempt to maintain a lighthearted equilibrium in a world gone mad....Without the Good Shepherd, we are alone in a meaningless story. Weariness and fear leave us feeling overwhelmed, unable to move. Cynicism leaves us doubting, unable to dream. The combination shuts down our hearts, and we just show up for life, going through the motions.” - Paul E. Miller

52. “But I was naturally suspicious; it comes from working too closely with the police for too long. Cynicism is so contagious.” - Laurell K. Hamilton

53. “Constantly exposing yourself to popular culture and the mass media will ultimately shape your reality tunnel in ways that are not necessarily conducive to achieving your Soul Purpose and Life Calling. Modern society has generally ‘lost the plot’. Slavishly following its false gods and idols makes no sense in a spiritually aware life.” - Anthon St. Maarten

54. “Haven’t you heard of privacy, or were you raised by a tribe of hedonistic Vikings?” - Wade Kelly

55. “Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.” - A.J. Liebling

56. “And you that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended.” - Lord Dunsany

57. “I think cynicism often disguises itself as humour.” - Michka Assayas

58. “The public is always relieved to find that once the chief officers of state are elected they do not sincerely want change.” - Gore Vidal

59. “Humans are moving into a new phase, one based on the knowledge that talking about their feelings has never got them anywhere.” - Glen Duncan

60. “Humanity is a monster you can never kill.” - Kameron Hurley

61. “There was something in her eyes that made me trust her. Maybe it was because they held the same cynicism, the same world-weariness I saw in my own every morning when I looked at myself in the mirror.” - Melika Dannese Lux

62. “Cynicism makes you feel smart, I know it, even when you aren't smart.” - Richard Ford

63. “A thousand years from now nobody is going to know that you or I ever lived. The cynic is right, but lazy. He says ‘You live, you die and nothing you do will ever make a difference.’ But as long as I live, I’m going to be like Beethoven and shake my fist at fate and try to do something for those who live here now and who knows how far into the future that will go. If I accomplish nothing more than making my arm sore, at least I will be satisfied that I have lived.” - Jackson Burnett

64. “It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.” - Diogenes of Sinope

65. “This is some sort of joke, isn't it?" asks Hunt, staring at the flawless blue sky and distant fields.I cough as lightly and briefly as possible into a handkerchief I have made from a towel borrowed from the inn. "Probably," I say. "But then, what isn't?” - Dan Simmons

66. “Dantes had entered the Chateau d’If with the round, open, smiling face of a young and happy man, with whom the earlypaths of life have been smooth. and who anticipates a future corresponding with his past. This was now all changed. The oval face was lengthened, his smiling mouth had assumed the firm and markedlines which betoken resolution; his eyebrows were arched beneath a brow furrowed with thought; his eyes were full of melancholy, and from their depths occasionally sparkled gloomy fires of misanthropy and hatred; his complexion, so long kept from the sun, had now that pale color which produces, when the features are encircled with black hair, the aristocratic beauty of the man of the north; the profound learning he had acquired had besides diffused over his features a refined intellectual expression; and he had also acquired, being naturally of a goodly stature, that vigor which a frame possesses which has so long concentrated all its force within itself.” - Alexandre Dumas

67. “I am discovering that I can live far better without cynicism than I can without trust.” - Steve Goodier

68. “If this was cynical, then we must allow that all courtship is cynical.” - Zoe Heller