Quotes about cynicism

“I’d pay a premium for this one, your Highness.”

“That one isn’t for sale[.]”

“Everything’s for sale, your Highness,” Althalus replied with a cynical laugh.

Foxholes might breed belief, but trench systems are full of fatalistic cynics.

Could a person really be cynical about everything in the world and still expect to have friends?

Sansa, permit me to share a bit of womanly wisdom with you on this very special day. Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.

Before one scoffs at national pride and the fatherland, at wealth and good manners, love of one's country, family, and traditions, one must have arrived at a proper evaluation of one's country, have had enough to eat, and have received a good education. Then one can look on from afar and make wisecracks. But I have no sense of humor and not enough courage to be cynical.

Psychologically, present-day cynics can be understood as borderline melancholics, who can keep their symptoms of depression under control and can remain more or less able to work. … Their psychic (seelisch) apparatus has become elastic enough to incorporate as a survival factor a permanent doubt about their own activities. They know what they are doing, but they do it because, in the short run, the force of circumstances and the instinct for self-preservation are speaking the same language, and they are telling them that it has to be so.

Deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what—or who—is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort’s words, “It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy.”

We are full of dreams [...] We long for the unattainable. We believe in the nonsense of fables. There is no pure love; there is lust and there is need.

"Foolish: It's all foolish. Life is a farce— a stupid, sickening farce played out by fools."

He was getting to be a little old for combat or for princesses, but what was worse, he had become a lot more cynical without having become even slightly the wiser.

Giving full rein to one‘s cynicism as one goes along produces a normal outlet and maintains an emotional equilibrium.

It had been his experience that the worst cynics all started out as idealists.