What's the difference between cynic and idealist?

Cynic


Definition:

  • (a.) Alt. of Cynical
  • (n.) One of a sect or school of philosophers founded by Antisthenes, and of whom Diogenes was a disciple. The first Cynics were noted for austere lives and their scorn for social customs and current philosophical opinions. Hence the term Cynic symbolized, in the popular judgment, moroseness, and contempt for the views of others.
  • (n.) One who holds views resembling those of the Cynics; a snarler; a misanthrope; particularly, a person who believes that human conduct is directed, either consciously or unconsciously, wholly by self-interest or self-indulgence, and that appearances to the contrary are superficial and untrustworthy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Still, cynics might say they can identify at least one reason it all might fail: namely form.
  • (2) But he won’t call.” Allardyce is also cynical about an offer from Swansea to compensate around 300 Sunderland fans who had booked trips to Wales before the date change.
  • (3) And it was here, several years later, that I came looking for an answer to a question which has baffled many cynical film critics: how did a low-key prison drama, which was considered a box-office flop on its initial release, become one of the most popular movies of all time?
  • (4) I have not met someone as cynical as Museveni,” Besigye told a rally in eastern Uganda in January.
  • (5) The aim of this study was to determine how individual differences in cynical hostility and defensiveness interacted with situational demands to affect cardiovascular responses in a natural setting.
  • (6) It goes on: "In a reality of ongoing occupation, of solid cynicism and meanness, each and every one of us bears the moral obligation to try to relieve the suffering, do something to bend back the occupation's giant, cruel hand."
  • (7) The present study extended this previous research by evaluating urinary cortisol excretion during routine daily activities in a sample of high and low cynically hostile young men.
  • (8) If Deng is a 21st-century Becky Sharp, we should recall that for all her cynicism, Thackeray's heroine also possessed an indomitable spirit.
  • (9) Oil companies are sponsoring the arts around the world on an “epidemic” scale as a cynical PR strategy to improve their reputation, a new book argues.
  • (10) The British ambassador to Ukraine , Simon Smith, called Yanukovych's decision "an egregious piece of cynicism".
  • (11) Cynics will tell you Camra’s membership know all about identity crises – once the rebels of the 1970s, they’re now mostly older dads and grandads – purists upholding Camra’s “cask only” creed as sacred.
  • (12) The swift action of the US in withdrawing funding is likely to increase cynicism among Palestinians about the credibility of the US as a mediator between them and the Israelis.
  • (13) Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat campaign manager, accused Cameron of using the Greens to duck TV debates, adding: “Not since the photos of Cameron driving huskies have green issues been so cynically harnessed to Tory interest.” The broadcasters have proposed three one-hour TV debates, the first involving the Ukip, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative leaders, the second Lib Dem, Labour and Tory.
  • (14) Police officers resigned and politicians were embarrassed as the scandal erupted, but Scotland Yard – with dazzling cynicism – has reacted by trying to silence the kind of police whistleblowers who helped to expose the failures of their leaders; and ambitious politicians continue to dine with Rupert Murdoch.
  • (15) I'm always initially very cynical: who are these people, they look ridiculous.'
  • (16) To somehow use the upcoming 2012 Olympics as a reason to do this is, in my opinion, unforgivably cynical.
  • (17) Serving on the government's Renewables Advisory Board from 2003 to 2006, I witnessed what cynics could easily have mistaken for a deliberate campaign of delay, obfuscation, and the parking, if not torpedoing, of good ideas coming from industry members of the board."
  • (18) Swansea, for whom Jefferson Montero was outstanding, levelled when Gylfi Sigurdsson curled a sublime 25-yard free-kick into the top corner, after Kieran Gibbs had cynically brought down Modou Barrow, the Swansea substitute.
  • (19) Cynics would say it has taken the scientific community a long time to achieve very little progress in our understanding of HIV-mediated CNS damage.
  • (20) The aid cynics attacking the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on development assistance should take note.

Idealist


Definition:

  • (n.) One who idealizes; one who forms picturesque fancies; one given to romantic expectations.
  • (n.) One who holds the doctrine of idealism.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The young European idealist who helped Leon Brittan, the British EU commissioner, to negotiate Chinese entry to the World Trade Organisation, also found his Spanish lawyer wife in Brussels.
  • (2) Valls immediately attacked Hamon as an idealist who couldn’t win the presidential election and styled himself as the voice of the serious left in government.
  • (3) The Lewinsky affair did not leave him disillusioned and Engskov's eyes brighten as he recalls his time in Washington: "It was an idealistic time.
  • (4) Far from being disgusted with her physicality, Ruskin – a rigorous Christian and idealist – felt anxious and subconsciously betrayed by the realisation that his love for Effie was a one-sided affair.
  • (5) Yes, sounding on about the ethical dimension to public service can sound corny and implausible when you have ministers rubbishing the state and all its works, but you and the vast majority of your civil service colleagues are doing the job because you are idealists.
  • (6) We are brought up to emphasise ideology, to neglect psychology and to observe government as a series of clashes between big people with big ideas acting in ways that are by turns manipulative and idealistic but explicable.
  • (7) It’s idealistic, it’s the right thing to do even if it turns out to be utterly futile.
  • (8) Similarities between the notion of life style and concepts of cultural integration are noted, and the various uses of life style are categorized along an idealist-materialist continuum.
  • (9) It may however, serve as an example of how idealistic principles might be combined with realism derived directly from clinical practice, and may thus serve to inspire others along similar paths.
  • (10) With Veep , rather than striving young idealists, you have cowardly egomaniacs and bunglers who are involved in endless arse-covering exercises.
  • (11) Never work for an organisation without proper security measures I was young, idealistic, naive and working in an active conflict zone for a small local NGO.
  • (12) About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along But Swartz's death came like a thunderbolt in cyberspace, because this insanely talented, idealistic, complex, diminutive lad was a poster boy for everything that we value about the networked world.
  • (13) The search for a synthesis bridging the gap between materialist and idealist approaches in anthropological theory has been invigorated by recent efforts to develop a critical medical anthropology.
  • (14) DanceSafe's Messer, a veteran of the idealistic PLUR (peace, love, unity, respect) oriented rave underground of the 90s, complains that the dance festivals offer a "packaged, containerised experience ...
  • (15) Goldsmith is an idealist and comes from a family that doesn’t shift its convictions easily and which knows how to run campaigns.
  • (16) The Greens – young, highly educated, cosmopolitan liberal idealists – are more or less the polar opposite to Ukip’s ageing, socially conservative, nationalist electorate.
  • (17) Although self-immolation as social protest was widely publicized during the years surveyed, the authors note that these individuals all attempted suicide for personal and irrational rather than morally idealistic reasons.
  • (18) Rather, it is that they have increasingly used the language of rights to express their idealistic goals (or to conceal their strategic goals).
  • (19) Idealistic and metaphysical concepts of the structure-function relationships (morphological idealism, holism, physiological idealism, functionalism) are critisized, and historical premises of these concepts are characterized.
  • (20) The creative risk – such as it is – within the new series centres on the retelling of real events as they would have been covered by this idealistic newsroom.