Quotes about Cynicism

Obsessing on evil is boring.  Rousing fear is a hackneyed shtick.  Wallowing is despair is a bad habit.  Indulging in cynicism is akin to committing a copycat crime.

DISCLAIMER: Material in this book may be too intense and controversial for some readers.  It contains graphic scenes of peace, love, joy, passion, reverence, splendor, and understanding…. You should therefore proceed with caution if you are a jaded hipster who is suspicious of feeling healthy and happy. Ask yourself: "Am I ready to stop equating cynicism with insight?  Do I dare take the risk that exposing myself to uplifting entertainment might dull my intelligence?"

DEFINITION: Pronoia is the antidote for paranoia.  It's the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly.  It’s a mode of training your senses and intellect so you're able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring.  Cynicism is idiotic.  Fear is a bad habit.  Despair is lazy.  Joy is fascinating.  Love is an act of heroic genius.  Pleasure is our birthright.  Receptivity is a superpower.

PROCEDURE: Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination.  Assume that secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to be.  Join the conspiracy to shower all of creation with blessings.

Okay, so maybe I'm romantic... but somebody is supposed to be romantic. Some warrior is supposed to go to war against the imperial forces of cynicism and irony. I am a sentimental soldier.

Irony: Don't let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments.

"Cynicism," like "heresy" and "heterodoxy" and "atheism" and "agnosticism" and "paganism" and "heathenism," is above all else a way for organized orthodoxy's caste of official censors to encyst and segregate and thus neutralize all contrarian forms of seeing and thinking, all (necessarily implicitly) prohibited and repressed ways of exercising disruptive and iconoclastic intuition and intellection (for to analyze and explain these things too openly is to give them publicity and potential cogency when the point is to asphyxiate them).

Or you think you are always gentle, yet look at how viciously the world strikes at you nonetheless! This idea of your victimization is merely cynicism turned inside out and made more impenetrable to insight. You are clever enough to disguise your addiction to gloom in protests of innocence. The good news is that you may never be effectively challenged by others about this routine; few friends have enough wisdom and chutzpah at the same time. The bad news is that you will probably never walk your way to forgiveness in sensible steps. You will have to leap your own well-built defenses, disowning your morbid vanity in mid-flight.

A jaded optimist is someone who expects the worst, but prepares for the best.

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

The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.

Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.

It is not OK in this culture to talk to friends about causes you believe in, much less to ask them to join in. It's OK to blast perfect strangers with crass messages every hour of the day, but it's a tinge embarrassing, it brings up some shyness, it seems an intrusion, it risks rejection to share real heartfelt commitments. It's easier to share our cynicism with strangers than our dreams with friends.

The excrement most human minds expunge disgusts me, so it is naturally in my best interests to rid myself of them. I only tolerate Lisa because she doesn't expunge too terribly much.

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it.  What appears bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.  You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

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

Lose/Win people bury a lot of feelings. And unexpressed feelings come forth later in uglier ways. Psychosomatic illnesses often are the reincarnation of cumulative resentment, deep disappointment and disillusionment repressed by the Lose/Win mentality. Disproportionate rage or anger, overreaction to minor provocation, and cynicism are other embodiments of suppressed emotion. People who are constantly repressing, not transcending feelings toward a higher meaning find that it affects the quality of their relationships with others.

Without order or authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty, during which men . . . forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice. . . . They forgot that their rights were founded on their duties. . . . They thought it clever to be cynical, enlightened to be unbelieving, and sensible to be soft.

In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug and we shall want to live more musically.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

It has been written: To the cynic the body is no more than a tenement of clay. To the poet, a palace of the soul. To the physician, an all too ailing hulk. The psychiatrist sees it as a housing for the mind and personality. The geneticist sees it as a perpetuation of its own kind. The biologist sees it as an organism which can alter the future as a result of the experience of the past. The anthropologist sees it as an accumulation of culture. Others have viewed the body as essentially just a machine, a concept that sometimes appeals and sometimes appalls. The English satirist Samuel Butler dismissed his fellow men as but "a pair of pincers set over a bellows and a stew pan and the whole thing fixed upon stilts." But to the more reverent, the bodily mechanism is a masterpiece of precise planning-a delicate and complex apparatus whose various components work as a unit to achieve such diverse feats as scaling a mountain top, building a bridge or composing a symphony.

An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is the one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

I'm not cynical about marriage or romance. I enjoyed being married. And although being single was fun for a while, there was always the risk of dating someone who'd owned a lunch box with my picture on it.

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives.

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism, for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all.

Cynics build no bridges; they make no discoveries; no gaps are spanned by them. Cynics may pride themselves in being realistic in their approach, but progress and the onward march of Christian civilization demand an inspiration and motivation that cynicism never affords. If we want progress we must take the forward look.