“You are a cynical man, Mr. Pleasant."
"We live in cynical times, Miss Cain.”
Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer
Source: Death Bringer
"Just middle-aged. Ideas used to grab me too. It's not that you get better ideas, the old ones just get tired. After a while, you see that even dollars and cents are just an idea. Finally the only thing that matters is putting some turds in the toilet bowl once a day. They stay real, somehow. Somebody came up to me and said, 'I'm God,' I'd say, 'Show me your badge.'"
Rabbit Redux (1969)
“You are a cynical man, Mr. Pleasant."
"We live in cynical times, Miss Cain.”
Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer
Source: Death Bringer
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer
Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 137
“Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.”
Colum McCann book TransAtlantic
Source: TransAtlantic
“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
Variant: Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations
§ 2.1, cited in Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (1987), p. ix
Untimely Meditations (1876)
“Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State
As quoted in Sketchbook 1966-1971 (1971) by Max Frisch, p. 230
1970s
Alex Steffen (1968) American writer and futurist
Go bright green | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books. http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2035002,00.html