Quotes on Cynicism

I will eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, selfishness, and cynicism, by developing love for all humanity, because I know that a negative attitude toward others can never bring me success. I will cause others to believe in me, because I will believe in them, and in myself.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.

Always forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.

Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.

Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.

You see, in this world there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons.

All lies are told with a straight face. It is truth that's said with a dismissive giggle.

Let it never be said by future generations that indifference, cynicism or selfishness made us fail to live up to the ideals of humanism which the Nobel Peace Prize encapsulates. Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war.

Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good.

What this generation was bred to at television's knees was not wisdom, but cynicism.

Cynicism is just an excuse for not helping.

Cynicism cripples our imagination and limits our ability to see faint possibilities amidst glaring problems.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference.

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

The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true."

There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of.

I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction.