Blind Optimism Quotes

Faith isn't pretending our problems don't exist, nor is it simply blind optimism. Faith points us beyond our problems to the hope we have in Christ. ~ Billy Graham

You know, you have to start with hope ... you don't get anywhere in this country without hope. So it's a necessity. What Barack says is that people have to understand hope isn't just blind optimism. It isn't passive. It isn't just sitting there waiting for things to get better. Hope is the vision that you have to have. It's the inspiration that moves people into action ... There are more people engaged in this political process in this year than we've seen in my lifetime. And it is all because of hope because people believe in the possibility of something unseen. ~ Michelle Obama

He has always had a dangerous tendency to embrace blind optimism in the face of hard facts. ~ Jonathan Tropper

If we have no place to go where we can escape that reaction to our bodies, where is it that we're not forced? The idea that these crimes are escapable is the blind optimism of men who don't understand what it means to live in a body that attracts a particular kind of attention with magnetic force. ~ Jessica Valenti

To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful. ~ Brennan Manning

Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be. ~ Barack Obama

But all the fighting in the world will not help us if we do not also hope. What i'm trying to cultivate is not blind optimism or inane positivity but what the philosopher Jonathan Lear calls radical hope. "What makes this hope radical," Lear writes, "is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is." Radical hope is not so much something you have but something you practice; it demands flexibility, openness, and what Lear describes as "imaginative excellence." Radical hope is our best weapon against despair, even when despair seems justifiable; it makes the survival of the end of your world possible. Only radical hope could have imagined people like us into existence. And I believe that it will help us create a better, more loving future. ~ Junot Diaz

A second chance doesn't mean you're in the clear. In many ways, it is the more difficult thing. Because a second chance means that you have to try harder. You must rise to the challenge without the blind optimism of ignorance. ~ Ling Ma

I'm not interested in blind optimism, but I'm very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, 'This is not enough.' ~ Colum McCann

Like pride, blind optimism may go before a fall. ~ David Myers

I've questioned everything about myself, every step of the way. You have to have the same amount of fear and self-doubt as you do hope and blind optimism. ~ Taylor Swift

We'd like to bury the idea that there's a right way and a wrong way, a smart way and a foolish way, a red way and a blue way. The modern world demands that we all think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally; that we think from a different angle, with a different set of muscles, with a different set of expectations; that we think with neither fear nor favor, with neither blind optimism nor sour skepticism. That we think like - ahem - a Freak. ~ Steven D. Levitt

May the pain you have known and the conflict you have experienced give you the strength to walk through life facing each new situation with courage and optimism. ~ Winston Churchill

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. ~ Oscar Wilde

Those who believe the axiom that "Ignorance is bliss" only discovered its true meaning when the bliss began to hiss. ~ Kevin Ansbro

Nesse's research focuses on the evolutionary origins of depression. Why does depression exist at all? If it's stayed in our gene pool for so long, he argues, there must be some evolutionary benefit. Nesse believes that depression may be an adaptive mechanism meant to prevent us from falling victim to blind optimism - and squandering resources on the wrong goals.11 It's to our evolutionary advantage not to waste time and energy on goals we can't realistically achieve. And so when we have no clear way to make productive progress, our neurological systems default to a state of low energy ... ~ Jane McGonigal

something's knocking at the door

a great white light dawns across the
continent
as we fawn over our failed traditions,
often kill to preserve them
or sometimes kill just to kill.
it doesn't seem to matter: the answers dangle just
out of reach,
out of hand, out of mind.


the leaders of the past were insufficient,
the leaders of the present are unprepared.
we curl up tightly in our beds at night and wait.
it is a waiting without hope, more like a prayer for unmerited grace.


it all looks more and more like the same old movie.
the actors are different but the plot's the same:
senseless.


we should have known, watching our fathers.
we should have known, watching our mothers.
they did not know, they too were not prepared to teach.
we were too naive to ignore their counsel and now we have embraced their ignorance as our own.
we are them, multiplied.
we are their unpaid debts.
we are bankrupt in money and in spirit.


there are a few exceptions, of course, but these teeter on the
edge
and will
at any moment
tumble down to join the rest
of us,
the raving, the battered, the blind and the sadly
corrupt.


a great white light dawns across the
continent,
the flowers open blindly in the stinking wind,
Charles Bukowski

To clear the path, whether that be the elimination of obstacles, closing the blind spots, or to provide guidance, so that the business as a whole can take a digital leap and unleash its full potential. ~ Pearl Zhu

I want to learn your trickery and feel what it's like to have me wrapped around your finger. I want to lie to everyone because it gets me where I want faster. I want to be like you, because you are blind; and now that I finally see, I don't want to. ~ Coco J. Ginger

Her dark world was bright because of her sparkling attitude! ~ Archana Chaurasia Kapoor

When the sun comes out in Hawaii, it warms up. When the sun comes in Puerto Vallarta, it warms up. when the sun comes out in Minnesota in January, you just go snow-blind. ~ P.J. Tracy

Action without thought is empty. Thought without action is blind. ~ Kwame Nkrumah

Don't just focus on seeing things from your own perspective. It can give you blind spots. ~ Sudakshina Bhattacharjee

Right after I lost vision in my eye, I was so bad at walking that I ran into a girl eating ice cream, and knocked her cone out of her hand. She screamed: 'Are you blind!?!?' I turned to her and said: 'I am blind actually, I'm so sorry, I'll buy you a new cone.' And she said: 'Oh my God! I'm so sorry! Don't worry! It's no problem at all! I'll buy another one.' So we walked into the ice cream store together, and the clerk said: 'I heard the whole thing. Ice cream is free. ~ Brandon Stanton

I inherited from my father and still nourish the notion that Republicans are those who have acquired enough money, often by inheritance and blind luck, to entertain the opinion that their fellow citizens should work harder and be more grateful to the moneyed class while they refrain from work themselves and sit in clean rooms with folded soft hands examining their bank statements and brokerage reports. ~ Bill Holm

The music speaks to you every day, but you are too deaf, dumb, and blind to even listen to the music. You are too deaf, dumb, and blind to stop what you are doing. ~ Charles Manson

The man held himself still and turned his milk-flooded eyes on her. Fin felt something like vertigo and knew that, though blind, he was seeing. He wasn't looking at her or past her. He was looking into her. And what he saw, he judged.
"Is very good. ~ A.S. Peterson

It's remarkable what people become blind to when they're in such darkness. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

There would be no one there to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistance with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination. ~ Kate Chopin

If you saw humanity as I can see it, Uncle Jem said, a whisper in his mind, a lifeline. There is very little brightness and warmth in the world for me. I am very distant from you all. There are only four points of warmth and brightness, in the whole world, that burn fiercely enough for me to feel something like the person I was. Your mother, your father, Lucie, and you. You love, and tremble, and burn. Do not let any of them tell you who you are. You are the flame that cannot be put out. You are the star that cannot be lost. You are who you have always been, and that is enough and more than enough. Anyone who looks at you and sees darkness is blind.

"Blinder than a Silent Brother?" James asked, and hiccupped.

There was a laugh in James's mind. They would have to be even blinder than a Silent Brother, Uncle Jem agreed. Because I can see you, James. I will always look to you for light. ~ Cassandra Clare

I believe that if the silent majority were to protest against those who believe in irrational blind faith - who want to go backwards instead of forward, who are for tradition not innovation, who oppose individualism and plurality of thought - then the world would become a truly civilized world in which to live. ~ Taslima Nasrin

You don't have to be in a perfect situation to be happy.You just have to feel at peace with the world. ~ Neil Dover

Conventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world. ~ George Friedman

To those who see the magical surface of things, you are invisible.'
Good grief. Will you still be able to see me?'
He met her eyes in a way that made her shiver pleasantly. 'I see you in a great many ways. It would be hard to blind me in all of them. ~ Emma Bull

Love isn't blind. It sees but it doesn't mind. ~ Anonymous

How can people be so blind?" I shrug. "Don't overestimate the masses. They love you until they hate you. They hate you until they love you. ~ Amanda Bouchet

Events," I say to the Captain, "events control our lives, although we have no understanding of them nor do they have any motivation. Everything is blind chance, happenstance, occurrence; in an infinite universe anything can happen. After the fact we find reasons. ~ Barry N. Malzberg

The child you hold in your arms is your gift to a future that you will not see. Therefore, we must turn a blind eye to ourselves and selflessly pour the best of ourselves into our children while rigorously sifting out the worst of ourselves. And once we are utterly spent by such daring gestures, we will shockingly discover the resulting emptiness as astonishingly filled. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

in the sentiment of Mahatma Gandhi, when we practice the law of an eye for an eye, we all end up blind. ~ Desmond Tutu

A woman should be able to see the reflection of herself within her lover's eyes. This tells you that you are all that your lover sees. However, by simply placing that thought into your mind, and creating that image, your illusion will blind you from what your lover truly sees. This is usually a woman's reality, until they start to demand the truth. ~ Lionel Suggs

Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches. ~ Hyman G. Rickover

She
smiled with a newfound optimism. "The one thing I've learned most out of
all this is that it's not over until all the cards are played. She laid down
her ace, thinking we can't beat it. But there are fifty-one other cards in the
deck and the game isn't over yet. We'll figure something out. Her little fit
right now just shows that she's played her best hand. That was all she's
capable of doing to hurt you which is exactly why she did it. Don't let her
ruin your day, baby, and don't let her take from us what we have. We've gotten
this far together. What's another bitter goddess to us? Like my papou always
says, over, under, around or through. There's always a way and we'll find it."- Tory ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

In the girl's room on the chest of drawers stood the glass vase with the withered flowers, the water had evaporated, it was there that her blind hands directed themselves, her fingers brushed against the dead petals, how fragile life is when it is abandoned. ~ Jose Saramago

No wonder that the ghost and goblin stories had a new zest. No wonder that the blood of the more timid grew chill and curdled, that their flesh crept, and their hearts beat irregularly, and the girls peeped fearfully over their shoulders, and huddled close together like frightened sheep, and half-fancied they beheld some impish and malignant face gibbering at them from the darkling corners of the old room. By degrees my high spirits died out, and I felt the childish tremors, long latent, long forgotten, coming over me. I followed each story with painful interest; I did not ask myself if I believed the dismal tales. I listened and fear grew upon me - the blind, irrational fear of our nursery days. ("Horror: A True Tale") ~ John Berwick Harwood

Through art they confuse us and blind us to our enslavement. Art adorns our prison walls, keeps us silent and diverted and indifferent. ~ Jim Morrison

ANTHONY:
I feel you, Johanna, I feel you
Do they think that walls can hide you?
Even now I'm at your window
I am in the dark beside you,
Buried sweetly in your yellow hair, Johanna…

SWEENEY TODD:
And are you beautiful and pale,
With yellow hair, like her
I'd want you beautiful and pale,
The way I've dreamed you were, Johanna...

ANTHONY:
Johanna...

SWEENEY TODD:
And if you're beautiful, what then,
With yellow hair, like wheat?
I think we shall not meet again -
My little dove, my sweet Johanna…

ANTHONY:
I'll steal you, Johanna…

SWEENEY TODD:
Goodbye, Johanna.
You're gone, and yet you're mine.
I'm fine, Johanna, I'm fine!

ANTHONY:
Johanna…

BEGGAR WOMAN:
Smoke! Smoke! Sign of the devil! Sign of the devil!
City on fire!
Witch! Witch! Smell it, sir! An evil smell!
Every night at the vespers bell -
Smoke that comes from the mouth of hell -
City on fire! City on fire!
Mischief! Mischief! Mischief...

SWEENEY TODD:
And if I never hear your voice,
My turtledove, my dear,
I still have reason to rejoice:
The way ahead is clear, Johanna...

JOHANNA:
I'll marry Anthony Sunday
Anthony…Sunday…

ANTHONY:
I feel you…

SWEENEY TODD:
And in that darkness when I'm blind
With what I can't forget -
~ Stephen Sondheim

Thank goodness for the first snow, it was a reminder
no matter how old you became and how much you'd seen, things could still be new if you were willing to believe they still mattered. ~ Candace Bushnell

Bad advice will blind you.
Good advice will instruct you.
Great advice will enlighten you. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I'm one of those people who is colour blind to a certain degree. And that doesn't mean I'm not acutely aware of race in our country and abroad and in the world. I know what's going on, and I'm very aware of it. ~ Mike Colter

I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy. ~ Mary Balogh

Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime. ~ Imre Lakatos

The positive psychology field has taught us about the benefits of optimism and happiness. One study correlated the life spans of Major League Baseball players with their smiles. In 2010, researchers Ernest Abel and Michael Kruger analyzed 230 baseball cards from 1952, a time when cards featured athletes looking straight at the camera. The results will make you want to smile.
* Players not smiling had an average life span of 72.9 years.
* Players partially smiling had an average life span of 75.0 years.
* Players with a full smile had an average life span of 79.9 years. ~ Jim Afremow

The Truth is not Arbitrary or a Matter of Opinion, but can be Investigated, and Those who Earnestly Search for the Truth will Find It. The Truth is Hidden to the Blind, but he who has the Mental Eye Sees the Truth. ~ Gautama Buddha

Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, inpregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children. ~ David Hume

The command to judge not is not a requirement to be blind, but rather a plea to be generous. Jesus does not tell us to cease to be men ... but to renounce the presumptuous ambition to be God. ~ John Stott

We can praise a man only when we have seen what he accomplishes. But we must praise God in order to see what he accomplishes. And therefore we should praise him at the very moments in life when there seems to be no way out. Then we shall learn to see the way out for our own lives, simply because God is there at the end of every way and every blind alley. ~ Helmut Thielicke

I began writing eight or ten words of my own on a sheet of paper, in very large letters that I could read without any trouble. I did that for over a month, filling a couple of small, dime-store writing tablets. Then suddenly I quit. For no particular reason. Chiefly, I was saddened by my own ignorance, I think. Then, too, I was a little afraid I was going blind. There's never just one reason for anything. But, anyway, I quit. ~ J.D. Salinger

Rebellion is born of the spectacle of
irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition. But its blind impulse is to
demand order in the midst of chaos, and unity in the very heart of the ephemeral. It protests, it demands, it
insists that the outrage be brought to an end, and that what has up to now been built upon shifting sands
should henceforth be founded on rock. Its preoccupation is to transform. But to transform is to act, and to
act will be, tomorrow, to kill, and it still does not know whether murder is legitimate. Rebellion engenders
exactly the actions it is asked to legitimate. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that rebellion find its
reasons within itself, since it cannot find them elsewhere. It must consent to examine itself in order to
learn how to act. ~ Albert Camus

The single most outwardly identifiable trait demonstrated by a winning human being is that of positive self-expectation- which is pure and simple optimism. ~ Denis Waitley