Elisabeth Shue Quotes

Cynicism is the easiest of all reactions, right? But it's also so disappointing and self-defeating.

We must break the cycle of cynicism that has hold of many of our youth.

I do get cynical, but what can you do? It doesn't make any difference.

People have moved beyond apathy, beyond skepticism into deep cynicism.

People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better.

I do not write often now - not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear. Why dwell upon it?

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

I think people in Europe are generally pessimistic about the future. They have low expectations; they're not working hard to change things. When you're a slacker with a pessimistic view of the future, you're likely to meet those expectations.

We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.

I think by now I have made it fairly clear that I am not very happy with the word hope. I don't believe in people just hoping.

I used to be an optimist, but now I know that nothing is going to turn out as I expect.

Negativity drove me out of politics in the mid-Nineties.

What people are tired of, the people who agree with me, what they're tired of is listening to that sound, the sound of the people who've given up.

One of the key emotions a lot of people seem to be feeling is disillusionment, and what I try to do as a lyricist is touch on these emotions.

I don't hope for anything. Not only in my professional life, but in my family life also. My total lifestyle is like that.

You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.

In a world that's ugly and a lie, it's hard to even want to try.

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone.

Sooner or later, many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.

After all, there is nothing but failure.

I think I probably hoped for it a little bit, but I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist... or maybe even a pessimist.

In the current climate, we live in a pessimistic and non-idealistic world.

It's always discouraging when you don't have things go your way. They are frustrated just like the rest of us.

I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed.