Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.

...God created the world in six days. On the seventh day, he rested. On the eighth day, he started getting complaints. And it hasn't stopped since.

They were Archer's second set of children an d paragons of contemporary teenage cynicism. They enjoyed setting fire to the tails of tender thoughts.

I am not capable of true friendship. One of the two friends is always the slave of the other, although, often, neither of the two admits this to himself.

It's when the 'international community' expresses 'concern' about your 'situation' that your situation is well and truly fucked.

He said cynicism’s self-protection, a defense mechanism used by cowards who give up on love because they’re afraid love’s given up on them.

Try persuading the world not to cut its throat for half a decade or more...and it'll begin to dawn on you that even your behavior's part of its plan.

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.

As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?

Say as little as possible, hope some of the undecideds like your teeth better than the other guy’s—that’s usually the way this business works.

She (historian Barbara Tuchman) draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human ability as amused and saddened by human folly.

His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.

For years, I had used these fractured men to justify my cynicism and workaholism, and the grief, insomnia and casual anorexia were no longer of any interest to me.

The atmosphere was electrified by the orgasm with which the strong and secure are overcome when confronted with the visible frailty of someone worse off than themselves.

Voltaire expected that within fifty years of his lifetime there would not be one Bible in the world. His house is now a distribution centre for Bibles in many languages.