Cynical Quotes

Life is too important to be taken seriously.
- Oscar Wilde

Related topics: Wisdom Life Human-Nature Psychology Funny Cute Whimsey

Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're gonna get.
- the movie Forrest Gump

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain,
and most fools do.
- Benjamin Franklin

You have enemies? Good.
That means you've stood up for something,
sometime in your life.
- Winston Churchill

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn't be done.
- Amelia Earhart

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer
but wish we didn't.
- Erica Jong

Watch what people are cynical about,
and one can often discover what they lack.
- George S. Patton

Some things will never seem adequate
no matter how hard we try.
- from the movie White Man's Burden

Be careful not to do your good deeds
when there's no one watching you.
- Tom Lehrer

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
- Mark Twain (attributed)

Men occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin

Speak when you are angry -
and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.
- Laurence J. Peter

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks-
if we agree with him.
- Mark Twain

It is far better to be alone,
than to be in bad company.
- George Washington

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
- John Morley

Life is fully as bad as you think it is,
so never think life is bad.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

No crime is so great as daring to excel.
- Winston Churchill

You got to be careful if you
don't know where you're going,
because you might not get there.
- Yogi Berra

Everything popular is wrong.
- Oscar Wilde

Never let your sense of morals
get in the way of doing what's right.
- Isaac Asimov

Man plans, God laughs
- Yiddish Proverb

If you want reality to be different than it is,
you might as well try to teach a cat to bark.
- Byron Katie

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

It is well to remember that the
entire population of the universe,
with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
- Andrew J. Holmes

Why not go out on a limb?
Isn't that where the fruit is?
- Mark Twain

With manners comes insincerity.
Truth is sometimes difficult.
- Bono

My life has been filled with terrible misfortune;
most of which never happened.
- Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

The presence of those seeking the truth
is infinitely to be preferred
to the presence of those who think they've found it.
- Terry Pratchett

When we blindly adopt a religion,
a political system, a literary dogma,
we become automatons. We cease to grow.
- Anais Nin

Nothing is ever going to work out the way you want,
so you may as well choose to want the way life does work out.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Always listen to the experts.
They'll tell you what can't be done and why.
Then do it.
- Robert Heinlein

When you ask the wrong question,
you usually get a nonsense answer.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Never ascribe to malice that which is
adequately explained by incompetence.
- Napoleon

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown
is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell

Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand
with a grip that kills it.
- Rabindranath Tagore

The bulk of the world's knowledge is an imaginary construction.
- Helen Keller

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.
- Epicurus

When all else fails, try thinking.
- Anonymous

No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.
- Robert A. Heinlein

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand
my complaint about them not understanding me.
- Soren Kierkegaard

When we remember we are all mad,
the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
- Mark Twain

The more you expect, the more you get disappointed in life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When trouble arises and things look bad,
there is always one individual who perceives a solution
and is willing to take command.
Very often, that individual is crazy.
- Dave Barry

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
- Henry David Thoreau

The first sigh of love is the last breath of wisdom.
- Anonymous

I distrust those people who know so well
what God wants them to do,
because I notice it always coincides
with their own desires.
- Susan B. Anthony

It is one thing to say that something should be done,
but quite a different matter to do it.
- Aesop

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it is time to pause and reflect.
- Mark Twain

What people often mean by getting rid of conflict
is getting rid of diversity,
and it is of the utmost importance
that these should not be considered the same.
- M. P. Follett

What people believe prevails over the truth.
- Sophocles

Love is an irresistible desire
to be irresistibly desired.
- Robert Frost

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry,
that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware
of having no good reason for thinking as you do.
- Bertrand Russell

An unsolicited suggestion is
undistinguishable from a criticism.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life is like a ten speed bicycle.
Most of us have gears we never use.
- Charles M. Schulz

Life - for most people - is their past projected large
onto the movie screen of their future.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life is a game - a game you can never win.
You already know the final score: Life 1, You 0.
Doesn't mean you can't have fun playing.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The pendulum of the mind alternates
between sense and nonsense,
not between right and wrong.
- Carl Jung

You can discover what your enemy fears most
by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
- Michael Moncur

Don't part with your illusions.
When they are gone you may still exist,
but you have ceased to live.
- Mark Twain

Okay, so it's a matter of life and death - now are you happy?
Urgency is never a path to joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If a man is proud of his wealth,
he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
- Socrates

Most truths are so naked
that people feel sorry for them
and cover them up,
at least a little bit.
- Edward R. Murrow

The man who can't dance thinks the band is no good.
- Polish Proverb

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable
who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
- Joseph Addison

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

We only see what we want to see,
and hear what we want to hear
- don Miguel Ruiz

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity,
but in being uninteresting.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your friends love you anyway.
- Dave Barry

Be careful the friends you choose -
for you will become like them.
- W. Clement Stone

Nine-tenths of the people were created
so you would want to be with the other tenth.
- Horace Walpole

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie