Optimism And Pessimism Quotes

I've always been sceptical about the notion that the market is a person you can engage in an argument with, and that that person is an intelligent, rational, well-intentioned person: it is fantasy. We know that ... the market is subject to irrational optimism and pessimism, and is vindictive ... You're dealing with a crazy man ... Having got what he wants he will still kill you. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

All the people we loved, who have died, are still alive in the past. The only thing that really separates us is time. It's a matter of perspective. That's what separates optimism and pessimism. ~ Diana Palmer

Optimism and pessimism are mere matters of optics, of how you look at things, and that can change from day to day, or with a new prescription for your glasses - or with a new set of ideological filters. ~ George Weigel

An optimist is someone who figures that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's the bluebird of happiness. ~ Robert Breault

In optimism there is magic. In pessimism there is nothing. ~ Esther Hicks

My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud. ~ Henry Rollins

The genius of evolution lies in the dynamic tension between optimism and pessimism continually correcting each other. ~ Martin E.P. Seligman

I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story. ~ Doris Lessing

I am not optimistic or pessimistic. I feel that optimism and pessimism are very unbalanced. I am a very hard engineer. I am a mechanic. I am a sailor. I am an air pilot. I don't tell people I can get you across the ocean with my ship unless I know what I'm talking about. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

So this, thought Jan, with a resignation that lay beyond all sadness, was the end of man. It was an end that no prophet had foreseen – an end that repudiated optimism and pessimism alike.

Yet it was fitting: it had the sublime inevitability of a great work of art. Jan had glimpsed the universe in all its immensity, and knew now that it was no place for man. He realized at last how vain, in the ultimate analysis, had been the dream that lured him to the stars.

For the road to the stars was a road that forked in two directions, and neither led to a goal that took any account of human hopes or fears. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly. ~ Ambrose Bierce

After 5,000 years of recorded human history, you wonder, what part of 2,000,000 sunrises doesn't a pessimist understand? ~ Robert Breault

A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is one who hopes they are. ~ Chauncey Depew

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it. ~ George Bernard Shaw

How do you tell an optimist that he or she has lived a happy life by mistake? ~ Robert Breault

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little. ~ Mark Twain

Of all the things we are wrong about, error might well top the list ... We are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honourable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world. ~ Kathryn Schulz

Pessimists see problems as stemming from stable and universal causes, thus making them less susceptible to corrective action. Optimists, in contrast, view problems as temporary and resulting from specific factors that will either change or be changed. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Music frees my soul, under its spell I heal and sorrow continues to fail at keeping me enraged, caged as if a circus animal. Armed with it, ready and willing I sit to crush the horns of Baphomet. ~ The Raveness

Please don't. Don't oversimplify everything you've been through like that. You had to feel those awful feelings. You had to face them down
confront your bitterness and pessimism
and decide that you didn't want to be that way anymore. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Written with passion, honesty, humor, and a stubborn, rebellious optimism, Dear Marcus is like nothing I've ever read. When a bullet in the back told Jerry McGill not to go on, Jerry went on-smiling. ~ Shalom Auslander

My aesthetic is derived from my point of view which is one of optimism and hope. The camera became a conduit for my need to create a more beautiful world around me. ~ Mike Ruiz

If the European grows accustomed not to rule, a generation and a half will be sufficient to bring the old continent, and the whole world along with it, into mortal inertia, intellectual sterility, universal barbarism. It is only the illusion of rule, and the discipline of responsibility which it entails, that can keep Western minds in tension. Science, art, technique, and all the rest live on the tonic atmosphere created by the consciousness of authority. If this is lacking, the European will gradually become degraded. Minds will no longer have the radical faith in themselves which impels them, energetic, daring, tenacious, towards the capture of great new ideas in every order of life. The European will inevitably become a day-to-day man. Incapable of creative, specialized effort, he will always be falling back on yesterday, on custom, on routine. He will turn into a commonplace, conventional, empty creature, like the Greeks of the decadence and those of the Byzantine epoch. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

I learned long ago that conservation has no victories, that one must retain connections and remain involved with animals and places that have captured the heart, to prevent their destruction. I am sometimes asked why, given a world that is more wounded and scarred, I do not simply give up, burdened by pessimism. But conservation is my life, I must retain hope ~ George B. Schaller

It's a glorious universe the positive thinkers have come up with, a vast, shimmering aurora borealis in which desires mingle freely with their realizations ... Dreams go out and fulfill themselves; wishes need only to be articulated. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

They say you only really appreciate a garden once you reach a certain age, and I suppose there is a truth in that. It's probably something to do with the great circle of life. There seems to be something miraculous about seeing the relentless optimism of new growth after the bleakness of winter, a kind of joy in the difference every year, the way nature chooses to show off different parts of the garden to its full advantage. ~ Jojo Moyes

I am no ecological Pollyana. I have borne, and will continue to bear, feelings of wholehearted melancholy over the ecological state of the earth. How could I not? How could anyone not? But I am unwilling to become a hand-wringing nihilist, as some environmental 'realists' seem to believe is the more mature posture. Instead, I choose to dwell, as Emily Dickinson famously suggested, in possibility, where we cannot predict what will happen but we make space for it, whatever it is, and realize that our participation has value. This is grown-up optimism, where our bondedness with the rest of creation, a sense of profound interaction, and a belief in our shared ingenuity give meaning to our lives and actions on behalf of the more-than-human world. ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Approaching this day with optimism and fire, with patience and determination, with compassion and love. ~ Scott Stabile

For their optimism, these few spent years being disparaged as futurists, as impractical dreamers, as kids playing in a sandbox - until suddenly, in the fall of 2015 and the spring of 2016, the industry recognized that the future the visionaries described wasn't just possible. It was practical and desirable, and coming sooner than anyone might have ever thought. ~ Lawrence Burns

I was blind and heart broken and didn't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, "I have wonderful news!" And I was like, "I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now," and Gus said, "This is wonderful news you want to hear," and I asked him, "Fine, what is it?" and he said, "You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet! ~ John Green

It's such an act of optimism to get through a day and enjoy it and laugh and do all that without thinking about death. What spirit human beings have! ~ Gilda Radner

Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress. ~ Nicholas M. Butler

Telling someone to "follow their passion" is not just an act of innocent optimism, but potentially the foundation for a career riddled with confusion and angst. ~ Cal Newport

You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I describe, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described. You must forgive me my 'thee's and 'thou's and 'he's and 'she's, my lack of modern words and modern objectivity. It will be hard at first, but whether you are my contemporary still awed by the new order, or an historian gazing back at my Twenty-Fifth Century as remotely as I gaze back on the Eighteenth, you will find yourself more fluent in the language of the past than you imagined; we all are. ~ Ada Palmer

It's easy to want to be an author. You see it in your mind with sun streaming through windows and a Siamese cat purring on an antique rug and a little pellet stove and somehow the bills are paid and there's wit and self-sufficiency and divine inspiration seeping through walls and pores. And then, in your mind, you skip ahead to a book launch party and more Siamese cats.

When you graduate from wanting to working, you say, "I am going to flesh out this idea and write the whole thing down, and rewrite it, and rewrite it again, and rewrite it unendingly, and I'll have no real assurance of when it'll be good enough, but at some point I'll pitch it to someone who will decide if I'm delusional or not." The optimism and the ego-bruising, unsexy work needed to follow through feels unending. ~ Kate Inglis

To My Children,
I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably.
But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of War and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words...less than a year before the whole world went to war. ~ Rod Serling

A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we're good at (or getting better at) and enjoy. In other words, gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression. ~ Jane McGonigal

Great leaders are pragmatists who can deal with difficult realities but still have the optimism and courage to act. ~ Nitin Nohria

New Orleans, the storm, Perry, the river: they all reminded me not to take anything for granted. It all washes away, and we are all washed away with it. So when then ground is steady and the sky is clear, we should breathe deep until our lungs inflate against our ribs and hold in that one breath until we are lightheaded with the privilege of being human. The absolute privilege of being human. ~ Jacob Tomsky

The dry high spirits of this destroyer of optimism make most optimists look damp and depressed. ~ Philip Littell

Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat. Concentrate on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses ... on your powers, instead of your problems. ~ Paul J. Meyer

American cold war culture represented an age of anxiety. The anxiety was so severe that it sought relief in an insistent, assertive optimism. Much of American popular culture aided this quest for apathetic security. The expanding white middle class sought to escape their worries in the burgeoning consumer culture. Driving on the new highway system in gigantic showboat cars to malls and shopping centers that accepted a new form of payment known as credit cards, Americans could forget about Jim Crow, communism, and the possibility of Armageddon. At night in their suburban homes, television allowed middle class families to enjoy light domestic comedies like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, and Leave It to Beaver. Somnolently they watched representations of settled family life, stories where lost baseball gloves and dinnertime hijinks represented the only conflicts. In the glow of a new Zenith television, it became easy to believe that the American dream had been fully realized by the sacrifice and hard work of the war generation.

American monsters in pop culture came to the aid of this great American sleep. Although a handful of science fiction films made explicit political messages that unsettled an apathetic America, the vast majority of 'creature features' proffered parables of American righteousness and power. These narratives ended, not with world apocalypse, but with a full restoration of a secure, consumer-oriented status quo. Invaders i ~ W. Scott Poole

I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I don't want to go through it all again. All that time without you, always waiting, my foolish optimism that someday it would be different-"
"Your optimism was justified! Look at me. Look at us! This is different. I know it is, Daniel. I saw us in Helston and Tibet and Tahiti. We were in love, sure, but it was nothing like what we have now."
They'd dropped back farther, out of earshot of the others. They were just Luce and Daniel, two lovers talking in the sky. "I'm still here," she said. "I'm here because you believed in us. You believed in me."
"I did-I do believe in you."
"I believe in you, too." She heard a smile enter her voice. "I always have."
They were not going to fail. ~ Lauren Kate

Whenever you begin to conclude, "I can't win," and "What's the use?" you've set yourself up for failure. Your pessimism becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. ~ James C. Dobson

I believe in the possibility of happiness, if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions, including optimism. ~ George Santayana

I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism. And to alter now, cleanly and sanely, I want to shuffle off this loose living randomness: people; reviews; fame; all the glittering scales; and be withdrawn, and concentrated. ~ Virginia Woolf

Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life as a desirable state and man's happiness as its aim and object. Starting from this, everyone then believes he has the most legitimate claim to happiness and enjoyment. If, as usually happens, these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he suffers an injustice, in fact that he misses the whole point of his existence. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it's exactly like love in three ways: it's pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it. ~ Gregory David Roberts

Our sense of optimism, our can-do spirit, that's a source of great strength in America. But when there are no limits at all and we've gone through whole periods where we think everything has gone right, that's when disaster tends to strike. ~ Peter Beinart

In my ninety-plus years, I have learned a secret. I have learned that when good men and good women face challenges with optimism, things will always work out! Truly, things always work out! Despite how difficult circumstances may look at the moment, those who have faith and move forward with a happy spirit will find that things always work out. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Everything real is in the present moment. Only here can we find happiness and harmony, feel alive and do something that will change our future. Only here can we be with the people we love, enjoy the things we like and see beautiful places. ~ Lidiya K.

Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is some thing in them. ~ Christian D. Larson

Before asserting a prognosis on any patient, always be objective and never subjective. For telling a man that he will win the treasure of life, but then later discovering that he will lose, will harm him more than by telling him that he may lose, but then he wins. ~ Suzy Kassem

Fear is born in uncertainty and nourished by pessimism. ~ Lois Wyse

I am optimistic that the so-called hard problem of consciousness will be solved by empirical and conceptual advances - working in tandem - made in cognitive neuroscience. What is the hard problem? No-one has a clue (at the moment) how to answer the question of why the neural basis of the phenomenal feel of my experience of, for example red, is the neural basis of that particular phenomenal feel rather than a different one or none at all. There is an explanatory gap here that we do not know how to close now, but I have faith that we will someday. The hard problem is conceptually and explanatorily prior to the issue of what the nature of the self is, as can be seen in part by noting that the problem would persist even for experiences that aren't organised into selves. No doubt solving the hard problem (i.e closing the explanatory gap) will require ideas we cannot now anticipate. The mind-body problem is so singular that no appeal to the closing of past explanatory gaps justifies optimism. But I remain optimistic nonetheless. ~ Ned Block

Therapists are never "done" with growth, they are simply people who should be dedicated to learning as much about themselves and others as they possibly can. The best therapists are fully human and engage in the struggles of life. Our own failures help us to remain open to the struggles of others; our personal victories give us the optimism and courage to inspire those struggling with their lives. ~ Louis Cozolino

Whatever his weight in pounds and ounces, he always seems bigger because of his bounces. ~ A.A. Milne

Children have limited power to shape their own lives, but when they can experiment with possibilities through books, their optimism can be recharged and kept alive. ~ Morris Gleitzman

The sun will set and the sun will rise, and it will shine upon us tomorrow in our grief and our gratitude, and we will continue to live with purpose, memory, passion, and love. ~ Brent Schlender