#cynic

Obviously, there’s no way of making money that doesn’t hurt somebody somewhere, but there are degrees of scale and immediacy. A merchant prince or a banker or a wealthy landowner isn’t generally required to take responsibility for the people he cheats, screws and starves; society couldn’t function if that were the case. ↗

— K.J. Parker

#economy #money #money

Humans are part of nature, and nature is one great big wood chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones, and hair. ↗

— Douglas Coupland

#humanity #nature #nature

Go to Old Delhi,and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundred of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them.They know they are next, yet they cannot rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop. The very same thing is done with humans in this country. ↗

— Aravind Adiga

#cynical #india #india

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. ↗

— Stephen Colbert

#optimism #pessimism #disappointment

As you can see, I have memorized this utterly useless piece of information long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations. ↗

— Bill Watterson

#taking-tests #useless-information #cynicism

Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe. And if you poled your flatboat in that river you might fight your way against the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of empty hours wasted minutes years of repetition and time that has been killed. ↗

— Harlan Ellison

#cynicism

For better or for worse, I've watched people die in front of me. I see how they are in the end. And they're not cynical. In the end, they wanna hold somebody's hand. And that's real to me. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#cynical #die #end #front #hand

Idealist: a cynic in the making. ↗

— Irving Layton

#idealist #making

I read some of my stories recently and thought, 'How in the hell did I get away with that?' I had some really raw cynicism in some of them. ↗

— Carl Barks

#cynicism #did #get #had #hell

This isn't really a convention, This is really an infomercial. And every night we'll have a different infomercial and people view it with a certain level of cynicism. ↗

— Susan Estrich

#certain level #convention #cynicism #different #every