Cynicism Quotes (4 quotes)
[Public cynicism towards professional expertise is] entirely wrong, and it’s the road back to the cave. The way we got out of the caves and into modern civilisation is through the process of understanding and thinking. Those things were not done by gut instinct. Being an expert does not mean that you are someone with a vested interest in something; it means you spend your life studying something. You’re not necessarily right–but you’re more likely to be right than someone who’s not spent their life studying it.
As quoted in interview with Decca Aitkenhead, 'Prof Brian Cox: Being anti-expert – that’s the way back to the cave', The Guardian (2 Jul 2016)
If this cynicism and apathy are allowed to continue to fester, it will not only be dangerous, but in our democracy it will be suicidal.
Stating (1998) his commitment upon the announcement of the creation of the John Glenn Institute of Public Service and Public Policy Institute. As quoted on the OSU website, which also gives that in letters and documents from 1997, when he announced his retirement after four U.S. Senate terms, Glenn underscored his intent to dedicate his time toward dispelling “the apathy, mistrust and outright cynicism among our young people", which he saw as “a looming danger for the future of the country.”
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
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We do whatever we can to deny intuition of the invisible realms. We clog up our senses with smog, jam our minds with media overload. We drown ourselves in alcohol or medicate ourselves into rigidly artificial states... we take pride in our cynicism and detachment. Perhaps we are terrified to discover that our “rationality” is itself a kind of faith, an artifice, that beneath it lies the vast territory of the unknown.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 29
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
