Nouriel Roubini Quotes

I'm not interested in 'lovey dovey,' everything is so great in the world. That doesn't interest me at all.

Cynicism often draws correct conclusions, but nobody could live by its lights.

I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?

The worst thing about cynicism is its truth.

I'm capable of looking on the bright side. I just don't do it very often.

I've never been an optimist.

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye.

Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.

I don't have a Pollyana attitude toward life that claims everything is lovely.

I don't think I'm the only person who sees a cataclysm coming, but I think I'm the only person saying it, and I think that scares people.

I have never met an intelligent optimist. That is not to say I think pessimism makes you intelligent, but I have always felt like an Old Testament Jeremiah or Cassandra from ancient Greece. I want to run down the streets warning people.

I'm not Pollyanna.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.

It's important to not be naive about this world and know that it's not necessarily a good place to be.

Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.

I think it's dangerous to be optimistic.

God save me from idealists.

He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it.

In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club - the 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.'

I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

I was giving up--being realistic, as people liked to say, meaning the same thing. Being realistic made me feel bitter.

What is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one?.

It's so much easier to be cynical.

The prophets of doom, in my experience, are generally ignored and usually right.