Quotes on Cynical

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.

Even the most cynical can hardly be surprised by the antics of Nixon and his accomplices as they are gradually revealed. It matters little, at this point, where the exact truth lies in the maze of perjury, evasion, and of contempt for the normal - hardly inspiring - standards of political conduct.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

For Mr. Putin, vacillation invites aggression. His world is a brutish, cynical place, where power is worshiped, weakness is despised, and all rivalries are zero-sum.

On why I don't trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition - which despises small interests to gain great ones.

Songwriters might write cynical, world-wise lyrics and constantly talk about money, but most of us are downright naive when it comes to business.

All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.

History is neither written nor made without love or hate.

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

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?

Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.

What is love but a second-hand emotion?

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

I was, in reality, bred by my parents as my father's concubine... What we take for granted as the stability of family life may well depend on the sexual slavery of our children. What's more, this is a cynical arrangement our institutions have colluded to conceal.

Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here.

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.

Don't give up on your ideals. Don't compromise. Don't turn to expediency. And for heaven's sake . . . don't get cynical.

If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of his history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction. Murder within the species on an individual or collective scale is a phenomenon unknown in the whole animal kingdom, except for man, and a few varieties of ants and rats.

No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.