In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all.

Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.

Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning.

Doubt is always accompanied by a pervasive cynicism that unconsciously puts a negative spin on whatever it touches.

It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.

Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be.

I think that the memory of Armenia's genocide opened my eyes at an early age to the existence of political cynicism.

You can tell a lot about what a man lacks by watching what he is cynical about, and many of us are cynical about love.

It seems to me that the way to remove people's cynicism is, when asked a straight question, to give a straight answer.

I don't want to sound like the old guy, but cynicism is a potential danger. It colors our way of looking at the world.

Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts.

We have to use our discontentment to engage rather than disengage - our hope has to be more powerful than our cynicism.

The cynic, a parasite of civilization, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail.

Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.

Don't confuse my point of view with cynicism. The real cynics are the ones who tell you that everything's gonna be all right.

I exaggerate. I oversimplify. I generalize. But there’s no cynicism here. American poetry is a mess. Long live American poetry.

I like quips. I like whiffs of cynicism and I think they can be witty. But I don't really know where wittiness is constructive.

My level of cynicism about the reasons that took us to war against Iraq remain just as well-developed as they were before I went.

We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism.

This was the wonder of advertising; the complete absence of cynicism. It may have many mansions, but it has no room for Doubting Thomases.

For me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.

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.

Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives.

Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they're doing - this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.

No one ever wants to be the girl that got her relationship wrong again, but if you let your cynicism take over you risk never falling in love.

I get the cynicism thing all the time, although I don't really know where that comes from, because I think I'm actually the opposite of a cynic.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and only then, have you grown old.

I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.

It is cynicism, and not idealism, that is generally the mark of youthful immaturity, or rather it is the cynic who is generally the most foolish romantic.

We know that in tough times, cynicism is just another way to give up, and in the military, we consider cynicism or giving up simply as forms of cowardice.

I've got rid of a lot of cynicism and anger. I feel positive about my development, and I just want to carry on making music and building myself as a person.

For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous experiment; in regarding one's own trade a sense of humour and a little wholesome cynicism are not amiss.

I was a bit of a humour black sheep. I would make these jokes full of irony and dark cynicism and that just didn't work when I was seven, people did not laugh.

I'm an optimistic person, and I tend to bury my cynicism in what I read and the movies I watch. My optimism holds that the good guys eventually come out on top.

There have been times when a particularly heavy dose of such cynicism has caused me to reflect that surely this is the age and place of the gifted pickle sucker!

Scepticism is a necessary and vital part of the journalist's toolkit. But when scepticism becomes cynicism it can close off thought and block the search for truth.

I have a lot of friends that take that position of extreme cynicism, and I just can't let myself go to that place. It's just too easy, and it's just too defeatist.

For me, the more I think about the problems of the world, I feel I have to be positive. I wouldn't like to fall into cynicism or nihilism. That's not in my nature.

Both religions and musicals work best with energetic and committed believers. Cynicism or detachment would have destroyed the magic - something true of religion, too.

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.

I've always been optimistic. And I have a feeling that it happened because of going to all those movies with my grandmother in the '40s because there was no cynicism.

Without the confidence to know our democracy is functioning properly, we risk more disillusionment, more cynicism, and even more public apathy toward the entire system.

I'm not going to reduce the choices of Canadians at the ballot box by backroom deals or secret arrangements. I think that's a cause for cynicism more than anything else.

The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for them if they can predict hard times, bogging down, sniping, attrition.

You know, the cynicism that is in the politics, it is not for my soul. It makes me - out of me, an extremely bitter, cynical person that I hate to see in the mirror, really.

I think if you see that no one is going to laugh at you for it, I think the concept of living nicely will be infectious. I believe there is room for the absence of cynicism.

I don't think you can ever be ahead of your time with cynicism about that subject. No, I don't think it was ahead of its time. I think it was very much a product of its time.

Most cynics are really crushed romantics: they've been hurt, they're sensitive, and their cynicism is a shell that's protecting this tiny, dear part in them that's still alive.

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