Creativity Quote by Yoko Ono

Cynicism, in Yoko Ono's hands, isn’t a tough-minded worldview so much as a costume you’ve mistaken for skin. “The cynicism that you have is not your real soul” turns a familiar modern posture into something oddly impersonal: not who you are, just what you’re carrying. The phrasing matters. “That you have” frames cynicism as an accessory, a possession you can set down, not a permanent identity. Then she goes for the intimate jugular with “real soul,” a deliberately unhip phrase that refuses irony’s permission slip.

Ono’s intent feels less like scolding than deprogramming. Cynicism is described as a distortion layered over the self - a defense mechanism that protects you from disappointment by preemptively mocking hope. The subtext is a diagnosis of contemporary cool: the way skepticism becomes social armor, a status symbol, even a kind of moral superiority (“I see through it”). Ono counters with a spiritual claim: the truest part of you isn’t the one performing world-weariness.

Context sharpens the edge. Ono’s career sits at the crossroads of avant-garde art and mass-media backlash, a public life spent being doubted, ridiculed, and flattened into caricature. Her work often asks audiences to participate in vulnerability (instruction pieces, peace activism, “Imagine” adjacent optimism) when the culture rewards detachment. Read that way, the quote is both invitation and dare: drop the pose, risk sincerity, and discover that the inner core isn’t cynicism’s cleverness but something stubbornly alive underneath.