For me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.
Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.
Scientists are skeptics. It's unfortunate that the word 'skeptic' has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it's just thoughtful inquiry.
Cynicism is kind of like folding your arms and stepping back and commenting on things, like the old guys in 'The Muppets,' just throwing out comments all the time, whereas there are other people on the ground really trying to affect things and improve their lives and the lives of other people. I think it's noble and I think it's cool.
As the nation at last confronts global warming, it is no time for denial, greed, cynicism or pessimism.
Cynicism is only intellectual sloth.
I suppose I'd had, by the standards of that pre-permissive time, a good deal of sex for my age. Girls, or a certain kind of girl, liked me; I had a car-not so common among undergraduates in those days-and I had some money. I wasn't ugly; and even more important, I had my loneliness, which, as every cad knows, is a deadly weapon with women. My 'technique' was to make a show of unpredictability, cynicism, and indifference. Then, like a conjurer with his white rabbit, I produced the solitary heart.
Cynicism makes you feel smart, I know it, even when you aren't smart.
Cynicism, like gullibility, is a symptom of underdeveloped critical faculties.
Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil.
We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion - a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply.
I think that cynicism can often be mistaken for wisdom.
Don't confuse my point of view with cynicism. The real cynics are the ones who tell you that everything's gonna be all right.
I'm an eternal optimist with a small degree of cynicism.
I have a healthy cynicism, but not anger.
Heck, what's a little extortion among friends?
I've done four records now, and your idea of what it's going to be for that record is never what it ends up being, so there's cynicism in my outlook but there's also some positive outlook in it, like, "I can't really control anything outside of what it is that I do, so I'm going to do my very best and put my best foot forward in everything that I do. " The music and whatever else comes outside of that, if something great comes out of it, awesome, if not, I'm going to make another record and another one after that. That's really all I can do.
If the essence of cynicism consists in preferring nature to art, virtue to beauty and science; in not bothering about the letter of things -- to which the Stoic strictly adheres -- but in looking up to the spirit of things; in absolute contempt of all economic values and political splendor, and in courageous defence of the rights of independent freedom; then Christianity would be nothing but universal cynicism.
Cynicism isn't smarter, it's only safer. There's nothing fluffy about optimism.
. . . but a dream is nothing more than reality shorn of cynicism.