Sheldon S. Cohen Quotes

No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.

To me, politics is a pile of tricks.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

The honest man might observe... that no one gets something for nothing; that politicians go in poor and go out rich; that the Government screws up everything it touches; and that the Will to Believe is best confined to the Religious Venue, as to practice it elsewhere is just too damned expensive.

I'm riddled with cynicism. Whenever anyone says 'trust me,' the hairs go up on the back of my neck.

Bull permeates everything.... American people think politics and politicians are full of baloney.

As the trust deficit persists, a deeper rot takes hold: Attitudes and norms begin to change. When no one is trustworthy, it will be only fools who trust. The concept of fairness itself is eroded.

The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.

You and I have never seen democracy; all we've seen is hypocrisy.

There is less misery in being cheated than in that kind of wisdom which perceives, or thinks it perceives, that all mankind are cheats.

one tends to suspect others of what one is guilty of oneself. The unfaithful wife is quick to suspect the husband of infidelity.

The most mistrustful are often the greatest dupes.

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. It is the dishonest businessman's substitute for conscience. It is the communicator's substitute, whether he is advertising man or editor or writer, for self-respect.

You're lying through your fangs," Iggy accused. Fang tried to play innocent--but "innocent Fang" is an oxymoron, so it didn't work.

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now.

O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!

A dull head thinks of no better way to show himself wise, than by suspecting everything in his way.

Some of you in this room support higher taxes. I welcome your enthusiasm and am glad to report that the IRS takes both money orders and checks.

Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honourable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them.

A suspicious mind always looks on the black side of things.

You know there's no crooked politicians. There's never a lie because there is never any truth.

Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try. ---in Good Housekeeping