Cynic Quotes

I'm a hopeful cynic.

— Tracy Chapman

Idealist: a cynic in the making.

— Irving Layton

“An optimist is a braver cynic.”

— Colum McCann

I am not a cynic.

— Kevin Costner

A sewer is a cynic. It tells All.

— Victor Hugo

“The imagination is a cynic.”

— Richard Hugo

I'm an old cynic.

— Margot Kidder

Personally, I'm such a cynic.

— Ashley Zukerman

“A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist.”

— Susan Elia MacNeal

“The cynic is merely a cautious optimist.”

— C. Fear

Im a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.

— Carl Icahn

“A cynic is just a pessimist trying to be optomistic.”

— John Walter Scott

A cynic is a kind of romantic who has aged.

— John Updike

The more cynical you become, the better off you'll be.

— Matt LeBlanc

Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.

— George Carlin

Only the broken-hearted idealist can become a cynic.

— Mark Clifton

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in…

— Sydney J. Harris

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

— Oscar Wilde

God, as some cynic has said, is always on the side which has the best football coach.

— Heywood Broun

I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist.

— George Carlin

who was the cynic who had defined gratitude as thanks for favors to come?

— Ursula Curtiss

Everyone believes or perceives me to be a ruthless cynic, but far from it.

— Ekta Kapoor

I don't think being a cynic is necessarily a negative thing. It's a matter of seeing the world with clear and open…

— Tom Tomorrow

In the philosophical dialect, a cynic takes an insult as a compliment since opposition is already his style.

— Criss Jami

Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If I was a cynic I would be wondering if sooner or later some charismatic douche-bag might stomp all over this Little…

— Stephen Baxter

I'm very used to playing the tomboy or the sarcastic cynic. That's my go-to. Playing the vulnerable of a real girl that's…

— Kristen Bell

[in the]..curious way that my idealism has been mixed with my fatalism, so that I can possess the soul of a dreamer…

— Anais Nin

Progress is more of a challenge for the cynic but also more important and urgent, since for the optimist things aren't that…

— Julian Baggini

I'm cynical about society, politics, newspapers, government. But I'm not cynical about life, love, goodness, death. That's why I really don't want…

— John Lennon

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear…

— Oscar Wilde

The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that is seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilized…

— H. P. Lovecraft

“Possibly, some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, whatever our business…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The cynic would be almost right.8 Except it would not be the whole story. As I departed that day, I was not…

— Yanis Varoufakis

“Deliberately, she took a long drink. It wasn't as good as she remembered, but then little was. She caught herself in that…

— Nevada Barr

The wise screen writer is he who wears his second-best suit, artistically speaking, and doesn't take things too much to heart. He…

— Raymond Chandler

“No one is a greater schoolgirl in spirit than a cynic. Cynics cannot relinquish the rubbish they were taught as children: they…

— Muriel Barbery

Many teachers are concerned about the amount of material they must cover in a course. One cynic suggested a formula: since, he…

— Paul Halmos

Essentially, the [New York] Philharmonic is just like any other orchestra-they all have the spirit of kids, and if you scratch away…

— Zubin Mehta

A giant as we hoped, in truth, a dwarf; A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe's wharf', Which at first seemed…

— Edgar Lee Masters