George Carlin Quotes

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

The satirical direction I have chosen is an indication of my disappointment in man, which is the opposite way of saying that I have high expectations for the human race.

Cynicism stems from disappointment. Cynical and faithless people were not always like that. They were filled with possibilities and hope as kids. But they tried and perhaps failed.

I was very excited about the idea that I could be an idealist, that I could be my age, the eager beaver who had hope in the justice system and the one who gets disappointed just like the audience.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

I'm not by nature a cynical person. But sometimes your expectations are different from reality.

I went around in my teens and early 20s thinking that life was a con trick. I had managed to grow up believing in all sorts of romantic ideas about hard work and justice and truth, and it seemed the real world was much more complicated and shaded than I wanted to believe.

False hope really makes you cynical.

Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.

No one more cynical than an idealist.

I haven't stopped looking for the good in people. I've just accepted the fact that I'm not always going to find it.

I'm an idealist without illusions.

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.

Oftentimes when you see adaptations of books you like, you're let down. As an author, you assume that they are going to suck. A little bit of hope is dangerous.

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.

Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment.

Obama ran on a platform of unmitigated optimism - a promise to usher in a brighter day for America. But there could hardly be a greater contrast between his pledge and his performance in office, between his commitment to the nation and his current abandonment of all hope.

I get tired of negativity in our country. I get tired of people who only want to know dirt. I get tired of people who don't believe in themselves.

When is it too late to say it's still early for the Cubs? Try now. Their magic number is 1998, at least until it becomes 1999, but in lieu of a present, they offer you a future.

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.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

I can only say that in life when you have the greatest expectations and you try to do things the right way, it doesn't always work out.

Remember, beneath every cynic there lies a romantic, and probably an injured one.

I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed. Disappointed in the things that people do; disappointed in the things that people construct. I want things to be better all the time.

When you see somebody who's got a complaining personality, it usually means that they had some vision of what things could be, and they're constantly disappointed by that. I think that would be the camp that I would fall into - constantly horrified by the things people do.