Cheap Optimism Quotes

The radio truck has driven up to us in the forest. Already an hour earlier – hardly that we had received the news the Führer would speak – we shaved (lacking water, one can very well use coffee) and cleaned the uniform.
We now have war with England and France as well! It will become a difficult struggle and we in no way surrender to cheap optimism. But the faith in the Führer's genius is unshakeable. Our enemies have no leader and hence no political faith. We cannot imagine that they over there, our enemies, know at all for what they fight for. Hence they are soldiers without passion.
We will – simply because the Führer has taught us the style of a political existence – fight more persevering, more fanatically and more ruthlessly than our opponents. We have taken a great pledge: Either Europe will belong to us – the purified, hardened in itself, Germanic stamped Europe – or we will disappear from the stage of world history, such as the enemies of German freedom hope.
That the future belongs to us, is certain to us. Certainty that we owe our Führer. To fight in such certainty, is for us soldiers of 1939 the highest, manliest, most warlike happiness, for which our sons and grandchildren will one day envy us!
What a difference to 1914! ~ Kurt Eggers

The instinct of self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at the bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them nonexistent, and a warning such as mine against cheap optimism was bound to prove particularly unwelcome at a moment when a sumptuously laid supper was awaiting for us in the next room. ~ Stefan Zweig

If optimism is important, it's because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success. This flies in the face of the elite view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is determined by nothing more than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope! ~ Alain De Botton

Three or four plays cause the momentum to shift. We turned it over and gave Baylor a cheap score. ~ Bill Vaughan

We have won freedom, he brooded, but if we abuse it, or vote for cheap personal advantage, it won't be worth having. We are familiar with the abuses of kings, but because what we now attempt is new, we can't foresee its abuses. They'll come. ~ James A. Michener

The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Kyle worked in technology; he knew it would only be a matter of time before the video of Daniela and the A-list actor went viral and spread everywhere. So he did what any pissed-off, red-blooded computer geek would do after catching his girlfriend giving an underwater blowjob to another man: he hacked into Twitter and deleted both the video and her earlier tweet from the site. Then, raging at the world that had devolved so much in civility that 140-character breakups had become acceptable, he shut down the entire network in a denial-of-service attack that lasted two days.

And so began the Great Twitter Outage of 2011.

The Earth nearly stopped on its axis.

Panic and mayhem ensued as Twitter unsuccessfully attempted to counteract what it deemed the most sophisticated hijacking they'd ever experienced. Meanwhile, the FBI waited for either a ransom demand or political statement from the so-called "Twitter Terrorist." But neither was forthcoming, as the Twitter Terrorist had no political agenda, already was worth millions, and had most inconveniently taken off to Tijuana, Mexico to get shit-faced drunk on cheap tequila being served by an eight-fingered bartender named Esteban. ~ Julie James

You know what it's like when you go to IKEA and you can't believe how cheap everything is, and even though you may not need a hundred tea lights, my God, they're only ninety-nine cents for the whole bag? Or: Sure the throw are filled with a squishy ball of no-doubt toxic whatnot, but they're so bright and three-for-five-dollars that before you know it you've dropped five hundred bucks, not because you needed any of this crap, but because it was so damn cheap? ~ Maria Semple

All of the negativity and unsavory characters in this environment only serve to make the exceptions shine all the more brightly. ~ Damien Echols

Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping. ~ Augusten Burroughs

I was in the middle of an existential crisis and he was making me his person. How could he afford to be that honest? I was cheap. I fell for it because most of us just really want to be wanted. ~ Tarryn Fisher

Don't stop after you reach your goals; aim to surpass them! ~ Jen Selinsky

Fast sex, like fast food, is cheap, but it doesn't nourish the body - or the soul. ~ Suzanne Fields

The American Heart Association reports: There are numerous benefits of daily physical activity: reduces the risk of heart disease by improving blood circulation throughout the body; keeps weight under control; improves blood cholesterol levels; prevents and reduces high blood pressure; prevents bone loss; boosts energy levels; helps manage stress; releases tension; improves the ability to fall asleep quickly and sleep well; improves self-image; counters anxiety and depression and increases enthusiasm and optimism; increases muscle strength; gives greater capacity for other physical activities; provides a way to share an activity with family and friends; establishes good heart-healthy habits in children and counters the conditions ~ Michael Todd Wilson

has provided me with a platform to share my passion with millions in a way I neither expected nor could have imagined in my career. I hope that it's given the millions of people that I've touched the optimism and the desire to achieve their goals through hard work, perseverance, and positive attitude. Although I'm recognized with this tremendous honor of being in the Basketball Hall of Fame, I don't look at this moment as a defining end to my relationship with the game of basketball. It's simply a continuation of something that I started a long time ago. One day you might look up and see me playing the game at 50. (laughs) Oh, don't laugh. Never say never. Because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion. Thank you very much. Looking forward to it. ~ Nathan Aaseng

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. ~ Emma Goldman

Cheap jewelry, however, is worse than no jewelry at all, and there are very few things in life than are worse than no jewelry at all. ~ Jill Conner Browne

A good interpreter can take a piece of bad music and make it sound pretty decent, while a bad interpreter can take good music and make it sound cheap. I can tell that some people have a bad taste, and unlike on the piano, they smear around a lot, that is bad taste. ~ Ruggiero Ricci

Speak the affirmative; emphasize your choice by utter ignoring of all that you reject. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I turned to face Audrey, and everything I loved was right there in her eyes, the memories tangible: the schooldays and sleepovers, the cheap bottles of wine and sappy chick flicks. She was there for my mother's drunken relapses, there to hold me until I fell asleep the first time the ex from Seattle hit me. It was all there, and my God, each memory was suddenly sacred and the sun rose and set upon it. ~ Rachael Wade

The American political experience can therefore be viewed as optimism in the collective. ~ Michael J. Fox

Spirituality isn't static. It's an evolving optimism that won't let hardship get the best of you. ~ Judith Orloff

Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant. ~ Brene Brown

Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance; ... in which case, we should either-optimistically-get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might-as pessimists-give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway, things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos? ~ Salman Rushdie

Hope is optimism plus a belief there is a path out of your adversity. ~ Santiago "Jimmy" Mellado

Everyone in the Chinese economic world knows that the country is not going to move out of cheap-workhouse status, toward the realm of 'real' rich-country corporate power and prosperity, unless (among other changes) it begins removing these price distortions. ~ James Fallows

The Light and the Darkness both flow in to Delhi. Gurgaon, where Mr. Ashok lived, is the bright, modern end of the city, and this place. Old Delhi is the other end. Full of things that the modern world forget all about rickshaws, old stone buildings and Muslims. On a Sunday, though, there is something more: if you keep pushing through the crowd that is always there, go past the men clearing the other men's ears by poking rusty metal rods into them, past the men selling small fish trapped in green bottles full of brine, past the cheap shoe market and the cheap shirt market, you come great secondhand book market Darya Ganj.
You may have heard of this market, sir, since it is one of the wonders of the world. Tens of thousands of dirty, rotting, blackened books on every subject- Technology, Medicine, Sexual Pleasure, Philosophy, Education, and Foreign Countries - heaped upon the pavement from Delhi Gate onwards all the way until you get to the market in front of the Red Fort. Some books are so old they crumble when you touch them; some have silverfish feasting on them- some look like they were retrieved from a flood, or from a fire. Most shops on the pavement are shuttered down; but the restaurants are still open, and the smell of fried food mingles with the smell of rotting paper. Rusting exhaust fans turn slowly in the ventilators of the restaurants like the wings of giant moths.
I went amid the books and sucked in the air; it was like oxygen after the stench of th ~ Aravind Adiga

I don't like swearing on the air. As a matter of fact, I'm not a prude, but ... I watch HBO and some of the comedy stuff, and I'm constantly asking myself, 'Why have we gone there?' It seems like it's unfortunate. It's so cheap. It's so easy. ~ Brian Lamb

And yet, for all this, for all that he was unparalleled in depicting tyrants knee-deep in blood, Shakespeare was a little naive. Because his monsters had doubts, bad dreams, pangs of conscience, guilt. They saw the spirits of those they had killed rising in front of them. But in real life, under real terror, what guilty conscience? What bad dreams? That was all sentimentality, false optimism, a hope that the world would be as we wanted it to be, rather than as it was. Those who chopped the wood and made the chips fly, those who smoked Belomory behind their desks at the Big House, those who signed the orders and made the telephone calls, closing a dossier and with it a life: how few of them had bad dreams, or ever saw the spirits of the dead rising to reproach them." (p 94) ~ Julian Barnes

In my forties, my optimism was boundless. I had really good health and tremendous success which allowed me to do anything I wanted. ~ Patricia Cornwell

We are borrowing money from future generations. We are borrowing the carbon impact, the resource impact from future generations to get stuff cheap now. We have swept the dirt and dust from our society under the carpet - but this carpet is on other side of the planet. ~ Kevin McCloud

The Gospel worldview equips the artist with a unique combination of optimism and realism about life. ~ Timothy Keller

It is so easy to demonize free-market and the freedom to outsource and offshore because it is so much easier to see people being laid off in big bunches, which makes headlines, than to see them being hired in fives and tens by small and medium-sized companies, which rarely makes news. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

All sufferers can find comfort in the solidarity of the Crucified; but only those who struggle against evil by following the example of the Crucified will discover him at their side. To claim the comfort of the Crucified while rejecting his way is to advocate not only cheap grace but a deceitful ideology. ~ Miroslav Volf

A big reason for optimism about the end of animal farming is that it doesn't have to be the end of meat. ~ Jacy Reese Anthis