Cynicism is an unpleasant way
of saying the truth.
-Lillian Hellman
The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man,
and never fails to see a bad one.
-Henry Ward Beecher
A cynic can chill and dishearten
with a single word.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cynicism is intellectual treason.
-Norman Cousins
The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
-Joyce Carol Oates
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past,
he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
-Sydney J. Harris
Cynics are - beneath it all -
only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
-Alain de Botton
Inside every cynical person,
there is a disappointed idealist.
-George Carlin
Scratch a cynic
and underneath, as often as not,
you'll find a dead idealist.
-Joseph Epstein
Cynicism such as one finds very frequently
among the most highly educated young men and women of the West,
results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.
-Bertrand Russell
Never, never, never be a cynic, even a gentle one.
Never help out a sneer, even at the devil.
-Vachel Lindsay
It takes a clever man to turn cynic
and a wise man to be clever enough not to.
-Fannie Hurst
