Cynism Quotes

“HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.”
― Bertrand Russell, Education and the Social Order

“You sold us out, Clark. You gave them the power that should have been ours. Just like your parents taught you. My parents taught me a different lesson... lying on this street... shaking in deep shock... dying for no reason at all. They showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to.”
― Frank Miller, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

“In combating cynicism, it helps to know its source. Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustated idealist – someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.

Bill O’Brien points out that ‘burnout’ comes from causes other than simply working too hard: “There are teachers, social workers and clergy who work incredibly hard until they are 80 years old and never suffer ’burnout’ - because they have an accurate view of human nature. They don’t over-romanticize people, so they don’t feel the great pshychological stress when people let them down”
― Peter Senge

“La voluntad, el deseo de vivir, es tan fuerte en el animal como en el hombre. En el hombre es mayor la comprensión. A más comprender, corresponde menos desear. Esto es lógico, y además se comprueba en la realidad. La apetencia por conocer se despierta en los individuos que aparecen al final de una evolución, cuando el instinto de vivir languidece. El hombre, cuya necesidad es conocer, es como la mariposa que rompe la crisálida para morir. El individuo sano, vivo, fuerte, no ve las cosas como son, porque no le conviene. Está dentro de una alucinación. Don Quijote, a quien Cervantes quiso dar un sentido negativo, es un símbolo de la afirmación de la vida. Don Quijote vive más que todas las personas cuerdas que le rodean, vive más y con más intensidad que los otros. El individuo o el pueblo que quiere vivir se envuelve en nubes como los antiguos dioses cuando se aparecían a los mortales. El instinto vital necesita de las ficción para afirmarse. La ciencia entonces, el instinto de crítica, el instinto de averiguación, debe encontrar una verdad: la cantidad de mentira que se necesita para la vida”
― Pío Baroja, El árbol de la ciencia

“A miracle is anything that God forgot
to forbid.”
― Paige Lewis, Space Struck

“And you believe you will succeed, where God has failed me?”
― Mary Doria Russell, Children of God

“Only cynicism redeems a wedding. It takes a lot of cynicism for a couple to reach silver wedding.”
― Nelson Rodrigues, O Casamento

“Greater Albania?!", this is a mockery of an unprecedented cynicism.”
― Ismail Kadare

“It is preferable that the wise man should set up his residence there where the crowd of imbeciles and fools it is the largest”
― Dio Chrysostom

“You must learn to live with your body, my little one, and laugh and sing, and fill yourself and take everything you want. But don't be a dreamer.”
― Daphne du Maurier

“Diogenes was a cynic at his best. He was in search of an honest man but not an hones woman.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“Je suis pas cynique, me suis-je défendue. Je suis une pessimiste pure et dure avec une touche de réalisme agressif.”
― Holly Bourne, How Hard Can Love Be?

“You're so much like my husband was. A great deal of self-love, an equal amount of self-pity. He felt that no one loved him—he was certainly right about that as far as I was concerned—and he thought that gave him the license to love himself. And to pity himself at the same time.

Self-love is perhaps the greatest sin of all. It stifles the basic drive of man, which is to search for love until he finds it. Self-love is simply the easy way out; self-pity is the justification for it.”
― Hal Bennett, Lord of Dark Places