#kynic

[irwonder]

Half-measures do nothing. He who desires to reform, must not be afraid to pull down.

Diogenes, in George, Lord Lyttleton’s Dialogues of the Dead [quoted in The Making of Modern Cynicism by David Mazella]

[irwonder]

The kynic is prepared for things to turn out well, in a way that the believer seldom is. But the kynic, scoffing at utopian dreams, knows better than to hope for permanent correction. The best outcomes, pertaining as they do to events, are transitory, so a kynic may not even imagine the utopian possibility. The ideal is the kynic's target, not the goal.

William Chaloupka, Everybody Knows: Cynicism in America