“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”
Variant: Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
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George Carlin270
American stand-up comedian 1937–2008Related quotes
“Cynics are merely idealists with unusually high standards.”
Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer
Variant: Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
Source: The Course of Love
“It had been his experience that the worst cynics all started out as idealists.”
Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer
Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 18 (p. 166)
“If you scratch a Conservative, you find a Fascist.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech to the London Young Liberal Federation in the National Liberal Club (5 January 1925), quoted in John Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, 1922–1931 (1977), p. 109
Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons
“Scratch me and you will find the Nonconformist.”
Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937) British politician
1927. Quoted in Sir Charles Petrie, The Life and Letters of Sir Austen Chamberlain: Vol. II (Cassell, 1940), p. 321.
1920s
“Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan — spoiled.”
Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) British writer
Children of the Ghetto (1892), bk. 2, ch. 6.
“Scratch a pessimist and you find often a defender of privilege.”
William Beveridge (1879–1963) Economist and social reformer
As quoted in "Sayings of the Week" in The Observer [London] (17 December 1943)