Cynicism is easy. Mimicry is easy. Optimistic contrarians are the rarest breed.

A lot of these activists weren’t even registered voters.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

If you’re always worried about crushing the ants beneath you… you won’t be able to walk.

I am discovering that I can live far better without cynicism than I can without trust.

What good is ye world when ye canst not livest hither.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody...

Our sole concern with the long dead is aesthetic

These leaders are like the drug lords who ruled America’s ghettos in the crack age, men (and some women) interested in just two things: staying in power, and hoovering up enough of what’s left of...

That’s what I’ve never been able to get about religion: that charmless combination of altruism and insanity. Give me a cynical, self-interested bastard any day of the week; at least you can play chicken with...

When I was younger, I would cling to life because life was at the top of the turning wheel. But like the song of my gypsy girl, the great wheel turns over and lands on...

Our art is made in cities like New York by people who are running from other places. They feel themselves as misfits who were trapped in dead-end suburbs. They hated high school. Their parents did...

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be.

It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved...

It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid.

How tolerable misfortunes appear when they affect only other people! How strong the human body seems when it’s another man’s flesh that bleeds! How easy it is to look death in the face when it’s...

Results are their own propaganda. The vast majority of the people are free, prosperous, and safe under the Phoenix Society’s rule. They are happy. Why should they care if the likes of you are denied...

It seems all spirits need theatrics, eh? Even Christ himself requires incense and holy water. We’re a skeptical people. We need convincing.

I wouldn’t be caught dead sacrificing myself for this country.

I sometimes think that ‘friend’ is just a word I use for all the people I haven’t murdered yet.

Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

Idealists and reformers all become executioners in their turn. The road to utopia ends with the steps of the scaffold, the endless moment of the guillotine.

I hate the world. Everything comes into it so clean and goes out so dirty. (from COVER CHARGE – currently not listed)

No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.

Obviously, there’s no way of making money that doesn’t hurt somebody somewhere, but there are degrees of scale and immediacy. A merchant prince or a banker or a wealthy landowner isn’t generally required to take...

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse

Si la cursilería fuera un pecado, yo cada noche me ganaría el infierno.

You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they’ve discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction — the wisecrack.

I think cynicism is more enduring than sentimentality.

I conceal myself behind cynicism because it’s safe. Camouflage is more protective than body armor. Why do you think the Department of Defense contacted me to design a gun that shoots insults?

Unless I’m at a wedding, I don’t like veiled threats.

There was something in her eyes that made me trust her. Maybe it was because they held the same cynicism, the same world-weariness I saw in my own every morning when I looked at myself...

Humanity is a monster you can never kill.

Someone told me I’m a cynical fatalist but I prefer the term realist.

Our art is cynical and bad-ass and made by people who will not be happy until you join them in the church of “everything is fucked up, so throw up your hands.” This is art...

Birth, n.: The first and direst of all disasters.

It makes me feel tired about how guarded we are the whole time. Without even trying we’re ready to make a joke of everything, serving up the day with big dollops of irony and derision...

I had a dream about you. You shot me with a shooting star, but I was impervious because I was wearing a suit of armor made out of cynicism.

I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life–that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of...

Possibly, some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, whatever our business or amusement–however serious, however trifling–all dance to one identical tune, and, in spite...

Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren’t treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making...

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt...

Didn’t Chains tell you about the Golden Theological Principle?””The what?””The single congruent aspect of every known religion. The one shared, universal assumption about the human condition.””What is it?””He said that life boils down to standing...

If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every...

So basically you’re sticking around to watch us all fuck up ?””Yes. It’s one of life’s few guaranteed constants.

Humans are moving into a new phase, one based on the knowledge that talking about their feelings has never got them anywhere.

Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings...

Indulge me, John. Cynicism and foul language are the only vices I’m presently capable of. Everything else takes energy or money.

Scratch the surface of any cynic, and you will find a wounded idealist underneath. Because of previous pain or disappointment, cynics make their conclusions about life before the questions have even been asked. This means...