Cynical Quotes - Page 6

• Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Wisdom, Science, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.66, 谷月社

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• Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.

  Robert Southey

  Funny Birthday, Years, Long

  'The Doctor' (1812) ch. 130

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• It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty.

  Ilka Chase

  Religious, Atheist, Men

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• Politicians who wish to succeed must be prepared to dissemble, at times to lie. All deceit is bad. In politics some deceit or moral dishonesty is the oil without which the machinery would not work.

  Woodrow Wyatt

  Lying, Oil, Wish

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• The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Doctrine, Spirituality

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.76, Knopf

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• Someone once remarked that in adolescence pornography is a substitute for sex, whereas in adulthood sex is a substitute for pornography.

  Edmund White

  Sex, Substitutes, Adolescence

  Edmund White (2014). “States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America”, p.278, University of Wisconsin Pres

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• I was slightly cynical of the American mentality before I came over here, but now I preach it. Here, no one's going to tear you down if you buy yourself a $300,000 car. They're likely to say: "Well, you probably worked hard for it. Good luck to you."

  Simon Cowell

  Success, Hard Work, Good Luck

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• A happy home is one in which each spouse grants the possibility that the other may be right, though neither believes it

  Donald M. Fraser

  Anniversary, Marriage, Believe

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• The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Business, Mistake, Political

  "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, 1924.

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• What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to p*ss off; ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time? Wouldn't you consider that to be insane?

  Steve Buscemi

  Retirement, Years, Office

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• Sorry to be so cynical, but this is New York

  David Levithan

  New York, Sorry

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2010). “Dash & Lily's Book of Dares”, p.22, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Tired, I Am So Tired, Let Me

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.60, Hamilton Books

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• Give me priests who are fat and corrupt and cynical,(...) the sort who like to sit on soft satin cushions, nibble sweetmeats, and diddle little boys. It's the ones who believe in gods who make the trouble. (Tyrion)

  George R. R. Martin

  Believe, Boys, Giving

  George R. R. Martin (2011). “A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five”, p.286, Bantam

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• Juliana's a year older than me, but she sometimes seems younger - mostly because she's the opposite of cynical and I'm the opposite of the opposite of cynical.

  Claire LaZebnik

  Years, Opposites, Sometimes

  Claire LaZebnik (2011). “Epic Fail”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• The girls said she was too cynical about love, but how could you not be? On the surface, relations between men and women were all soft kisses and white gowns and hand-holding. But underneath they were a scary, complicated, ugly mess, just waiting to rise to the surface.

  J. Courtney Sullivan

  Girl, Kissing, Men

  J. Courtney Sullivan (2009). “Commencement”, p.96, Vintage

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• Calvin: Trick or treat! Adult: Where's your costume? What are you supposed to be? Calvin: I'm yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you're old and weak... Am I scary, or what?

  Bill Watterson

  Kids, Boys, Scary

  "It's a Magical World". Book by Bill Watterson, October 1996.

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• Humans have always preferred to live their lives​ by daylight. I used to think it was because human beings have crappy night vision, and it wasn't until I got older and more cynical that I realized it was because they have less to be afraid of during the day.

  Mira Grant

  Night, Thinking, Vision

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• We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.

  Federico Fellini

  Purity And Innocence, Mask, Innocence

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• It is a good idea to 'shop around' before you settle on a doctor. Ask about the condition of his Mercedes. Ask about the competence of his mechanic. Don't be shy! After all, you're paying for it.

  Dave Barry

  Doctors, Ideas, Shy

  Dave Barry (1984). “Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9 Months, with Tools You Probably Have Around the Home”, p.9, Rodale

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• For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Cutting, Simple, Expression

  Anthony Bourdain (2011). “Tony Bourdain boxset: Kitchen Confidential & Medium Raw”, p.281, A&C Black

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• Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.

  Andrei Sakharov

  Stress, War, Men

  "Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom" by Andrei Sakharov, ("The Threat to Intellectual Freedom"), www.sakharov-center.ru. 1968.

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• ...Sometimes I suspect that what had really happened was that we became more resigned, more cynical, raised our pain thresholds as we lowered our expectations. All in all, settled for less.

  Emma Donoghue

  Pain, Expectations, Sometimes

  Emma Donoghue (2013). “Hood”, p.145, Pan Macmillan

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• 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

  Moral Corruption, Boyhood, Facts

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• Hippy, you think everything is a conspiracy. Everything is!

  Ed Harris

  Thinking, Miserable, Conspiracy

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• The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Beautiful, Girl, Challenges

  Michel Houellebecq (2001). “The Elementary Particles”, p.61, Vintage

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