A Quote by Carolyn Heilbrun

Cynic' is the sentimentalist's name for the realist. — © Carolyn Heilbrun
Cynic' is the sentimentalist's name for the realist.
I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?
I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really.
An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.
You're a cynic," Urgit accused. Silk shook his head. "No, Your Majesty. I'm a realist.
It's good to be a cynic. I'm a cynic. But the best part of being a cynic is somebody proving you wrong.
The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing.
I am not a surrealist. I am only a realist. All this group - surrealists - use my name. No, no, I am realist.
A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist.
A politician or political thinker who calls himself a political realist is usually boasting that he sees politics, so to speak, in the raw; he is generally a proclaimed cynic and pessimist who makes it his business to look behind words and fine speeches for the motive. This motive is always low.
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.
A sentimentalist is one who delights to have high and devout emotions stirred whilst reading in an arm-chair, or in a prayer meeting, but he never translates his emotions into action. Consequently a sentimentalist is usually callous, self-centred and selfish, because the emotions he likes to have stirred do not cost him anything.
A cynic should never marry an idealist. For the cynic, marriage represents the welcome end of romantic life, with all its agony and ecstasy. But for the idealist, it is only the beginning.
An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
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