Irving Layton Quotes

Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.

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

I'm rather a cynic, I suppose. I do not believe in the niceness of humanity.

The only deadly sin I know is cynicism.

I have a grim outlook on the world, and in particular on humanity. Spent years denying it, but I am very misanthropic. And I live alone on a mountain for a reason.

I find nothing more depressing than optimism.

I have a big cynical side to me.

People don't believe in positive changes anymore.

There's a lot to be said for misanthropy.

Misanthropy is a suit of armor lined with thorns.

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!

Cynicism is a form of cowardice, a failure of courage to hope.

In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.

The very large, very respectable, and very knowing class of misanthropes who rejoice in the name of grumblers,--persons who are so sure that the world is going to ruin, that they resent every attempt to comfort them as an insult to their sagacity, and accordingly seek their chief consolation in being inconsolable, their chief pleasure in being displeased.

The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence: cynicism.

The worst thing about cynicism is its truth.

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It's the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

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

I used to think drinking was the only way to be happy. Now I know there is no way to be happy.

My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.

Yeah, it's pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.

You want positive, go elsewhere. Go find a different lie.

A man may make a misanthrope of himself, but he is never one by nature.

Nobody's interested in sweetness and light.