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“There's a reason that education sucks.
And it's the same reason
that it will never ever, ever be fixed.

It's never going to get any better,
don't look for it,
be happy with what you got.

Because the owners of this country don't want that.

I'm talking about the real owners now.
The real owners.
The big, wealthy business interests that control things
and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians.
The politicians are put there
to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice.

You don't.

You have no choice.
You have owners.
They own you.
They own everything.

They own all the important land.
They own and control the corporations.
They've long since bought and paid for the Senate,
the Congress, the state houses, and city halls.
They got the judges in their back pocket.
And they own all the big media companies
so they control just about
all of the news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying,
lobbying to get what they want.
Well, we know what they want.
They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

But I'll tell you what they don't want.
They don't want a population
of citizens capable of critical thinking.
They don't want well-informed, well-educated people,
capable of critical thinking.

They're not interested in that.
That doesn't help them.
That's against their interest.
That's right.

They don't want people who are smart enough
to figure out how badly they're getting fucked
by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
They don't want that.

You know what they want?
They want obedient workers.
Obedient workers.
People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork
and just dumb enough, to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs,
with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits,
the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension
that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

And now, they're coming for your Social Security money.
They want your fucking retirement money.
They want it back,
so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.

And you know something, they'll get it.
They'll get it all from you, sooner or later,
because they own this fucking place.

It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the big club.”
― George Carlin, Life Is Worth Losing

“There is one universally incorrect choice: do nothing. This didn't work when humans thought that plagues were a punishment sent by angry gods. Nor does a laissez-faire approach help stop disease when it is a deliberate policy choice.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Compassion isn’t lost in an instant like virginity, it disappears in increments until you are filled with a potent nihilism to which there is no cure.”
― Ayura Ayira, Nuclear Harlot

“Gregor now knew in his soul that greatness came at a price, and true greatness is paid for by the hour.”
― Noah Medlock, A Botanical Daughter

“For he who seizes a tyranny and does not kill Brutus, and he who sets a state free and does not kill Brutus' sons, maintains himself but a little while.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses

“Marriage is a jewellery box which, by some mysterious opposite of alchemy, turns gold, silver and diamonds back into base metal, paste and quartz.”
― Julian Barnes, The Only Story

“Ay," she said, in an incomprehensible monosyllable, that sounded profoundly cynical.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“But man will never be gone," she said, with insidious, diabolical knowledge of the horrors of persistence. "The world will go with him.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“Sincerity is frequently written off as an immature stance. Naiveté and earnestness often co-exist, but they are not necessarily the same thing. Naiveté is a simple lack of knowledge and experience. Earnestness is a way of BEING in the world: sometimes by default of innocence, but also as a conscious, informed choice to reject cynicism and live life in an authentic way. To be earnest is to face each day with an open spirit, as opposed to living one's life crouched in an impermeable, defensive posture. For many in our culture, it is a much greater sin to be a gullible idealist than a cruel cynic.”
― Kate Kretz, Art from Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice

“Hope is the slowest poison.”
― Duncan Ralston, Dead Men Walking: a Novelette

“The third and rarest sort know human life is an essentially painful disease which only death can cure. We have the strength to live consciously among those who live blindly. We are the cynics.”
― Alasdair Gray, Poor Things

“This continuity between Cynicism and Socratic thought can be expressed in an another way. Socrates made a sharp differentiation between the self and external objects as moral ends. External objects are morally neutral and hence cannot serve as ultimate ends; material wealth is neither good nor evil in itself, but wise use makes it so.50 Aristotle adopts this view in a more complex way, opening up at least the quasi-Cynic possibility that wisdom is self-sufficient and in no need of externals. For Aristotle, the highest life we can imagine is the life of God-pure thought and actuality, selfsufficient, unmoved, wholly non-material. Such a God has no need for wealth, for Hesiod's plough, ox, and slave-girl. In certain intense moments, one may begin to "immortalize" oneself and become like this God; through contemplation, the philosopher becomes at least psychologically more selfsufficient, less dependent on community.51 Only a god or animal may live without community,52 and, unlike the Cynic, the Aristotelian philosopher is more god than "dog." Yet, like the Cynics, Aristotle stresses the ontological difference between this highest state and materiality. God's well-being is not caused by externals, and analogously the thinker's most powerful experiences have nothing to do with material possessions. Wealth is not constitutive of perfect virtue and well-being as such; instead, it is a merely accidental feature of human life as ordinarily experienced. Therefore, Aristotle speaks of wealth as the material through which virtues like magnanimity express themselves; generosity is not caused by wealth, but has its origin elsewhere and so is in itself autonomous of wealth.”
― Will Desmond, The Greek Praise of Poverty: Origins of Ancient Cynicism

“Antisthenes was not the first to differ significantly from the Hesiodic assessment of work. Rather, his proposition that ponos is a good rather than an unwelcome punishment was preceded by the emergence of an "industrious optimism" especially after the late fifth century. Optimistic man sets himself above environmental forces and asserts himself in the world as an indomitable force. Rather than accepting a god-given lot, he dares to "take fate by the throat." Rather than plodding the old furrows, he strikes out in a new direction, gives himself new tasks, implements his own plans, accepts his own failures. Some are more driven than others. The most ambitious impose upon themselves the greatest tasks and work incessantly for success. Some terrible restlessness goads these imperialists on, and as they hunt victory relentlessly they stamp down the weak and scoff at talk of justice. What do they want? It is hard to tell, since no success seems to satisfy them. Each triumph inspires new undertakings, each disaster resilient hope. They seem to toil on without end, as if human desire itself were infinite.”
― Will Desmond, The Greek Praise of Poverty: Origins of Ancient Cynicism

“In Xenophon's summary of the allegory [Prodicus' "Choice of Heracles'' ] the young Heracles has sat down at a crossroads, not knowing which path to follow through life. As he sits deliberating, two women appear to him. Their physical appearance is a study in contrasts, and they are clearly villainness and heroine. Evil (Kakia) is overfed, plump, rouged, and all powdered up. She wears revealing clothes and is vain, viewing herself in a mirror and turning around to see if she is being admired. Virtue (Arete), on the other hand, wears simple white; her only adornments are purity, modesty, and temperance.
These apparitions proceed to give speeches in praise of the life that they can give Heracles. Evil speaks first-an ominous choice, since in such debates, the first speaker typically loses. She offers Heracles a life of free, effortless pleasure. There will be no delights that he will not taste, no difficulties that he will not avoid. He need never worry about wars and affairs. All he need trouble himself about will be what food or drink to take; what to look at, hear, smell or touch for his pleasure; what partner he might enjoy, how he might sleep softest, and how he can obtain all these with the least toil (aponOtata). If ever there are shortages, he will not suffer ponos or hardship either in body or soul. Rather "you will enjoy those things that others work to produce, and you will not hold back from profiting everywhere." Evil tells Heracles her name, but adds confidentially that to her friends she is known as Happiness (Eudaimonia).

Very different is the tone and substance of Virtue's argument. For while Evil would have Heracles live for himself alone and treat others as means to his self-gratification, Virtue begins by saying that she knows Heracles' parents and nature: Heracles must live up to his Olympian heritage. Therefore she will not deceive him with "hymns to pleasure." Evil's enticements are in fact contrary to the divine ordering, "for the gods have given men nothing good without ponos and diligence." There follows a series of emphatic verbal nouns to hammer home this truth: if you want divine favor, you must worship the gods; if you want to be admired, you must do good works for your friends; if you want to be honored, you must benefit your city and Greece; if you want the earth to bear crops, you must cultivate the land. Flocks require tending, war demands practice. And if you want strength (Heracles' trademark), you must accustom your body to serve your will, and you must train "with ponoi and sweat:'

At this point, Evil bursts in to deplore such a harsh lifestyle. She is immediately silenced, however, as Virtue argues that duality is essential to a sense of fulfillment and even to pleasure itself. For paradoxically, ponos (pain, struggle) makes pleasure pleasurable. Evil's vision of happiness is one of continual and languid orgy-food without hunger, drink without thirst, sex without desire, sleep without weariness. But as experience shows, continual partying soon loses its zest, even if one goes so far as to cool expensive drinks "with snow" in summertime. By contrast, Virtue's own followers have no real trouble in satisfying their desires. They do so not by committing violence against others or living off others' labor, but by simply "holding off until they actually do desire" food or drink. Hunger is the best sauce, and it is free.
Furthermore, Virtue appeals to Heracles' native idealism. What hedonists have ever accomplished any "fine work" (ergon kalon)? None, for no beautiful or divine deed is ever done "without me [Virtue] ." Therefore, wherever there are energetic, effective people, Virtue is present: she is a helper to craftsmen, a guard of the household, a partner in peacetime ponoi, an ally for the works (erga) of war, the best support of friendship. To choose Evil would be shameful and not even extremely pleasurable, while with Virtue one will lead the most varied and honorable life.”
― Will Desmond, The Greek Praise of Poverty: Origins of Ancient Cynicism

“... For the first Cynics probably did not fight in any battles, and they certainly condemned war as another instance of the idiocy of custom (nomos). Critiques of war surface as early as Homer's Achilles; there is a strong deprecation of war in both Herodotus and intellectual communities like the Academy and Lyceum. In their idealism, the Cynics made such critiques far more radical. For, according to them, why would one fight a war? If it were for the sake of wealth or honor, then what are wealth and honor? True wealth is self-sufficiency, not the coin and plunder that contemporary mercenaries covet. Honor is but a word, a "mere scutcheon;' and the Cynics will have none of it. The feckless wars of the late fifth and fourth centuries could only deepen this sense of disillusion: now Athens, now Sparta, now Thebes, now Jason of Pherae, now Philip, now Antigonus, now Seleucus, now some other king is in the ascendant, each contending furiously for the hegemony and spot of distinction. Yet, in the end, all this ambition comes to nothing, for all its objects are subject to the caprices of Tuche; in the end, even Alexander is just a wanderer with his shadow. It is more honest to reject the false absolutes of wealth, honor, and fatherland. Wisdom is seeing through such false notions and freeing oneself from the tyranny of customary language and thought-patterns. The true absolute is the self and in the self, all other values are recovered.”
― Will Desmond, The Greek Praise of Poverty: Origins of Ancient Cynicism

“There had been no love there, upstairs tonight, but it would come - Lucy would force it into being. She had no choice. She would never find her black lumps of poison or cut them out, and like Steven she would never be part of the world. In time, when she realised this, she would need someone to cling to, someone to absorb and deaden the impacting horror of her sentence. And to justify this dependence she would have to call it love.”
― Matthew Stokoe, Cows

“Звісно, там, де є вбитий, мусить бути й убивця. Та чи не вбивали вбивці просто з доброго сумління, а вбиті �� може, вони дозволяли себе вбивати тільки з підступу? Тобто справці діяли так жорстоко, тільки щоб випередити ницих жертв і їхні нелюдські злочини, а жертви свідомо йшли на смерть, аби умисно виставити справців у непривабливому світлі? Колись жертвою був той, кому вчинили насильство, кривду, від яких він не міг захиститися. Сьогоднішнім жертвам чинять насильство і кривду, але вони ніяк не можуть змусити повірити, що це їм заподіяли насильство й кривду, а не вони самі винні у своєму нещасті.”
― Карл-Маркус Ґаусс, Europejski alfabet

“There are people who like to ascribe only the basest of motives to the actions of others. This is not always because they act basely themselves; often they would not dream of acting as they suspect others of doing. They talk like this because they think that cynical explanations testify to their knowledge of life. A readiness to believe that others are acting honourably, so they imagine, is a sign of naiveté.”
― Vasily Grossman, Stalingrad

“Cynicism isn't interesting; it is often no more than a mask we place over tedium.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

“The Dark Cloud
Is the dismissive manner of ageism and how it punishes wrinkles but wants you to be caring
Is the army of truth that always seeks those who are daring
Is the cynicism that ties you up to a chair and leaves you there
Is mourning people who were as good as gold, sweet like sugar, and who had deep emotions that were rare”
― Aida Mandic, The Dark Cloud

“Diego said: Britain and America, a long history of working together in the business of death. He was a smoker himself. I pointed that out to him. He laughed and said that this contradiction was the point, the problem.”
― Natasha Soobramanien & Luke Williams

“His cynical nature told him nobody was too pure or noble to be corrupted—but it also told him people who benefited from the status quo rarely tried to change it.”
― Claudia Gray, Lost Stars

“The solution, in part, was obvious - take a lesson from dogs and other beasts and the simplicity of their existence, and rely on nature to provide a sufficiency of life's essentials.”
― Robert F. Dobbin, The Cynic Philosophers: From Diogenes to Julian

“She wanted to tell the girl: It’s complicated. I am now a person I never imagined I would be, and I don’t know how to square that. I would like to be content, but instead I am stuck inside a prison of my own creation, where I torment myself endlessly, until I am left binge-eating Fig Newtons at midnight to keep from crying. I feel as though societal norms, gendered expectations, and the infuriating bluntness of biology have forced me to become this person even though I’m having a hard time parsing how, precisely, I arrived at this place. I am angry all the time. I would one “day like to direct my own artwork toward a critique of these modern-day systems that articulates all this, but my brain no longer functions as it did before the baby, and I am really dumb now. I am afraid I will never be smart or happy or thin again. I am afraid I might be turning into a dog.

Instead, she said, smiling, I love it. I love being a mom.”
― Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

“Everyone tends to evaluate others starting from themselves. This is a disadvantage for people with a negative attitude, because they constantly underestimate and condemn others, and it is a disadvantage for those with a positive attitude, because they constantly overestimate and justify others.
On the other hand, the latter experience better the intervals between the effects of one bad evaluation and another.”
― Luigina Sgarro

“I have been correctly labelled, now. I am for things �� not against them. I must remember this. Mainly because this is more fun. It’s exhausting being cynical. You are trying to be an immovable, angry rock in the middle of a stream. But the stream will not move. It is you that will be worn down to dull silt.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl

“Do I jar you?" he asks with his sly charm.
"No," I say. “I am braced at every turn for disenchantment.��
"Well that might be just a little too bad,�� he says.”
― Lorrie Moore, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home

“Meanwhile the ceaseless requirements of the entertainment industry also threaten to deprive us other forms of critical style and of the means of appreciating them. To be called 'satirical' or 'ironic,' is now to be patronized in a different way. The satirist is the fast-talking cynic, and the ironist merely sarcastic or self-conscious and wised up. When a precious and irreplacable word like 'irony' has become a lazy synonym for 'anomie,' there is scant room for originality.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“People are all the same: they shit, they die, and somewhere in between, they bitch their way through it. You’ve got to get what’s yours while you can.”
― Nicholas Warack, The Sailor & The Porteña

“Empty gestures are what make the world go round, though.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Night Cyclist