On being cynical

Cynicism is intellectual laziness. It's seeing the problems clearly but stopping short of finding a way to fix them, coming up with excuses instead.

Coming Up for Air, George Orwell

"What should I be now if it hadn't been for war? I don't know, but something different from what I am. If the war didn't happen to kill you it was bound to start you thinking. After that unspeakable idiotic mess you couldn't go on regarding society as something eternal and unquestionable, like a pyramid. You knew it was just a balls-up." 

".. we don't do the things we want to do. It isn't because we're always working. Even a farm-hand or a Jew tailor isn't always working. It is because there's some devil in us that drives us to and fro on everlasting idiocies. There's time for everything except the things worth doing. Think of something you really care about. Then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you've actually spent on things like shaving, riding to and fro on buses, waiting in railway, junctions, swapping dirty stories, and reading the newspapers." 

"Fear! We swim in it. It's our element. Everyone that isn't scared stiff of losing his job is scared stiff of war, or Fascism, or Communism or something."

Elephants, Warpaint