Quotes about Cynicism

I could tell you tales of cobbler's wax which would disgust you with human nature.

There's as much crookedness as you want to find. There was something Abraham Lincoln said - he'd rather trust and be disappointed than distrust and be miserable all the time. Maybe I trusted too much.

Occasionally, merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we put unoffending Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and while they writhed, we impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile verbs and participles.

Unless we are hopelessly bound by cynicism, we have to acknowledge that the United States has been remarkably and consistently generous in sharing what it has, whether material things or ideas.

It's so easy to become a grumbler, someone who condemns and carps at everything on principle and sees an ulterior motive behind it.

America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.

The cynical ones are the best companions. But the best of all are the cynical ones when they are still devout; or after; when having been devout, then cynical, they become devout again by cynicism.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

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

Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are.