Optimism Quotes

Optimism requires confidence, and confidence is built on trust. And trust, as we know, flows in both directions. ~ Tim Brown

Americans have a tendency to believe that when there's a problem there must be a solution. ~ Henry Kissinger

I don't think you lead by pessimism and cynicism. I think you lead by optimism and enthusiasm and energy. ~ Patricia Ireland

The problem with preparing for the worst is that that has the power to attract the worst. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If we have any role at all, I think it's the role of optimism, not blind or stupid optimism, but the kind which is meaningful, one that is rather close to that notion of the world which is not perfect, but which can be improved. In other words, we don't just sit and hope that things will work out; we have a role to play to make that come about. ~ Chinua Achebe

When we play a game, we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we're more likely to reach out to others for help. ~ Jane McGonigal

One reason to keep going is that the country was given to us as a sacred charge. It is, as Stephen Vincent Benet says in 'the Devil and Daniel Webster,' not the only place that created free man- but... Read More its a place that demands that we decide what to do with out freedom. You can only punish yourself, That's the existential view. I don't think there's any reward beyond participating, beyond being here. And the antithesis of reward is punishment, and the only punishment that can come is self-inflicted. I remain optimistic. Whether or not the optimism is justified, I don't know. I want to stay around for the third act. ~ Mort Sahl

Hope is not mere optimism; rather, it is moving forward in anticipation of redemption in spite of the improbability of rescue. ~ Dan B. Allender

It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster.
There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference. ~ Helen Keller

It's really fascinating. I've never spent time in a place where they lost the wars, so it was interesting and I didn't know much about the history of the country. I didn't know they were under communist rule until the nineties. It's this whole attitude of being defeated, and frowning on optimism and American way of thinking. If we were laughing, Hungarian kids would be like "You're so American." ~ Evan Jones

But sixteen years without optimism had taken a heavy toll; ~ Salman Rushdie

Our degeneration, when it is traced back to its origin in our view of the world really consists in the fact that true optimism has vanished unperceived from our midst. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Barometer of success in later life is not that they always win, but how they deal with failure. An ability to pick themselves up when they fall, retaining their optimism and sense of self, is a far greater predictor of future success than class position in Year 3. ~ Helen Fielding

I'm not an overnight sensation. I'm a Texan. And I'm a Texas success story. I am the epitome of hard work and optimism. ~ Wendy Davis

Faith and optimism are cousins. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down ~ Charlie Chaplin

I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven. ~ Alice Thomas Ellis

One positive person affects the whole universe. If you improve yourself as a human being then you will contribute for the betterment of the whole planet. ~ Hina Hashmi

2016 - I have a good feeling about this! ~ Charles F. Glassman

Communists are the last optimists. ~ Nadine Gordimer

Americans like to get rich fast. That this means we go broke fast, too, is something that we have become very good at forgetting. Our ignorance of history is matched only by our unfailing optimism; it's actually part of our optimism. ~ Jill Lepore

Faith, courage, optimism, looking forward, bring us new life and more life. Futility, frustration, living in the past are not only characteristic of 'old age'; they contribute to it. ~ Maxwell Maltz

You know, Molly, if you can hold in your mind what you want long enough, you shall have it. ~ Kent Allan Rees

I was raised to believe that God has a plan for everyone and that seemingly random twists of fate are all a part of His plan. My mother - a small woman with auburn hair and a sense of optimism that ran as deep as the cosmos - told me that everything in life happened for a purpose. She said all things were part of God's Plan, even the most disheartening setbacks, and in the end, everything worked out for the best. If something went wrong, she said, you didn't let it get you down: You stepped away from it, stepped over it, and moved on. Later on, she added, something good will happen and you'll find yourself thinking - If I hadn't had that problem back then, then this better thing that did happen wouldn't have happened to me. ~ Ronald Reagan

I sat up straight and looked down at my pad, and then I realized: I'd been sketching you, really. I mean, I'd drawn the lamp, and the chaos on the desk, but I'd given it your soul. I'd given that lamp your optimism, your bright face looking down on all the havoc. ~ Steve Brezenoff

One thing about flying that he never got used to was that no matter how awful the weather was on the ground, if you flew high enough you could always find the sun. ~ Tom Clancy

There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested ... ~ Nelson Mandela

Only the really young are fearless, have the optimism, the romanticism to take unimaginable risks. ~ Olivia Wilde

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that? Come up with a smiling face, It's nothing against you to fall down flat But to lie there - that's a disgrace. ~ Edmund Vance Cooke

Optimism indicates that the situation has not been clearly understood. ~ Anonymous

I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't. ~ Dylan Thomas

Optimism is the staunchest worshipper of life. ~ Kedar Joshi

In the Middle East, optimism is a virtue; realism – a duty. ~ Raphael Cohen-Almagor

I think optimism is a moral imperative. ~ Marianne Williamson

For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

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

Optimism is a psychological disorder exhibited by those out of touch with reality ~ Oliver Pell

There was need of a phantastic, indestructible optimism, and one far removed from all sense of reality, in order, for example, to discover in the shameful death of Christ really the highest salvation and the redemption of the world. ~ Carl Jung

Happiness is long-lasting, a condition of the soul, the foundation on which the circumstances of life are experienced, endured, or enjoyed. ~ Auliq Ice

There are uses to adversity, and they don't reveal themselves until tested. Whether it's serious illness, financial hardship, or the simple constraint of parents who speak limited English, difficulty can tap unsuspected strengths. It doesn't always, of course: I've seen life beat people down until they can't get up. But I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

Positive emotions, such as the feelings of love, kindness, self-worth, confidence and optimism, produce a better person and a good destiny. ~ Auliq Ice

Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness. ~ Mark Twain

There is a defect in us
as human beings
because we think ourselves
a fortress, a mountain, unbreakable
but at the center
in that stillness of being
there is a chasm
of love
which echoes hope, compassion, empathy
try again, it says
and though the fault lines are full of darkness
we are held together by
the optimism and foolishness
of a single spark ~ Nadia Hasan

I speak of a tragic optimism, that is, an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Our feelings are not there to be cast out or conquered. They're there to be engaged and expressed with imagination and intelligence. ~ T.K. Coleman

The purpose that you wish to find in life, like a cure you seek, is not going to fall from the sky ... I believe purpose is something for which one is responsible; it's not just divinely assigned. ~ Michael J. Fox

Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it. ~ Ron Suskind

I believe that we are missing a great opportunity. We as Republicans are not really emphasizing what brings us together, and that's conservative values: love of the country. Love of family. Personal responsibility. Hard work. Optimism. Those are the things that we should be communicating to Latinos, and we're doing that very poorly. ~ Lionel Sosa

Optimism. It's not just a mind-set, it is behavior. ~ Larry Elder

Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts. ~ Helen Keller

Sorry to tell you, but that's a very old chestnut. My mother used to say when God slams a door on you, he opens a window.'

Tig gave this two seconds of respectful consideration before rejecting it. 'No, that's not the same. I'm saying when God slams a door on you it's probably a shitstorm. You're going to end up in rubble. But it's okay because without all that crap overhead, you're standing in the daylight.'

'Without a roof over your head, it kind of feels like you might die.'

'Yeah, but you might not. For sure you won't find your way out of the mess if you keep picking up bricks and stuffing them in your pockets. What you have to do is look for blue sky. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Whether we are aware of it or not, every act of trust carries with it a shiver of fear. A favorable situation can become dangerous. Deep down we know that life is insecure and precarious. However, if we do trust, the shiver carries with it a philosophical optimism: Life, with all its traps and horrors, is good The bet is implicit in trust itself. If we could be sure of everyone and everything, trust would have no value - like money, if it were suddenly limitless, or sunshine, if there were always fine weather, or life, if we were to live forever ~ Piero Ferrucci

Whereas in the past optimism had been regarded as rather shallow - because 'oh well, it's just your temperament, you happen to be just a cheerful sort of person' - what I wanted to do was to establish that in fact it is the pessimists who are allowing all kinds of errors to creep into their work. ~ Colin Wilson

In the Soviet Union we have a saying, a pessimist is someone who believes things can't get any worse. An optimist thinks maybe they can. ~ Abel Aganbegyan

Then I realize that words like "optimism" and "hope" which appear in all those self-help books that claim they'll make us more confident and better to cope with life, are just that: words. ~ Paulo Coelho

Some people are optimists. Some people are pessimists. I'm just a realist who believes that some things are worth fighting for. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Don't live in a world of 'I never should have'. Regret is a terrible burden to carry through life. It stoops your shoulders and keeps you looking down at the ground rather than up at the stars. ~ Mary Alice Kruesi

I never see problems. I always see challenges. By definition, a problem is something unwelcome or harmful, whereas a challenge is a contest. Contests can be won; and, I love winning. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

At times what you expect and what happens don't match.
The faster you accept and adapt to what happened & work towards creating what you believed, that what you expected gets created in a whole new way..! ~ Sujit Lalwani

To attribute foreseeable necessity to the catastrophe of Germany and the European Jews would be to give it a meaning that it didn't have. There is an unseemly optimism in such an assumption. In the history of mankind there is more that is spontaneous, wilful, unreasonable and senseless than our conceit allows. - GOLO MANN, GESCHICHTE UND GESCHICHTEN, P. 170 ~ Clive James

But we understand our liberty in a more positive sense as well, in the idea of opportunity and the subsidiary values that help realize opportunity - all those homespun virtues that Benjamin Franklin first popularized in Poor Richard's Almanack and that have continued to inspire our allegiance through successive generations. The values of self-reliance and self-improvement and risk-taking. The values of drive, discipline, temperance, and hard work. The values of thrift and personal responsibility.
These values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will - a confidence that through pluck and sweat and smarts, each of us can rise above the circumstances of our birth. But these values also express a broader confidence that so long as individual men and women are free to pursue their own interests, society as a whole will prosper. ~ Barack Obama

Whatever my limited knowledge, I tried to make up for it with energy. ~ Eric Greitens

We decided to read our emails out loud to the group in order to share the warmth and optimism the messages contained. One of the most heartwarming was from the father of Petty Officer Rodney "RaRa" Young of Katy, Texas. His dad got right to the point: "You'd better come home because you promised to help me put up a fence, and I could really use that help." Everyone laughed because the words took us back to the normal world and out of the anxious monotony of our detention. ~ Shane Osborn

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

I say looking on the bright side of life never killed anybody. ~ Jenny Han

Is it optimism or madness that keeps one forging ahead despite failure after failure? ~ Megan Chance

An eye for beauty instead of bleakness might have lightened some of his load. ~ John Piper

God is so much bigger than our 'what ifs' that he can turn them into 'why nots ~ Gary Rohrmayer

That's one of the great gifts of this, the greatest of all games, baseball: it allows you, still, to lose yourself in a dream, to feel and remember a season of life when summer never seemed to die and the assault of cynicism hadn't begun to batter optimism. ~ Mike Barnicle

Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire. ~ Bruce Springsteen

Pessimism doesn't change the reality; it prolongs the status quo. And it brings everyone down. It's only ever lose-lose. Optimism and faith coupled with pragmatism change the reality. Self-belief and self-reliance change the reality. Boldness to explore new ideas changes the reality. A vision powered by effort and energy changes the reality. ~ Rania Al-Abdullah

Germany has always stood for an E.U. of the 27 countries. But in light of Britain's continued resistance to further integration steps, as we saw with the fiscal pact, there are limits to my optimism in this regard. It's quite possible that we will have to create the new institutions for the euro zone first. ~ Wolfgang Schauble

Burnout is nature's way of telling you, you've been going through the motions your soul has departed; you're a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker. False optimism is like administrating stimulants to an exhausted nervous system. ~ Sam Keen

Some of us cannot be optimists, but all of us can be bigamists ~ Mark Twain

Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses. ~ Oscar Wilde

One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery. ~ Wallace Stegner

Don't ever let desperation take the seat of inspiration in you! Always live inspired no matter what! For though something might be wrong somewhere, something is always right somewhere! If you have life, be alive and smile! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

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

I think of inspiration as desire infused with spirit and topped with an almost reckless optimism. ~ Fred White

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

One of the major biases in risky decision making is optimism. Optimism is a source of high-risk thinking. ~ Daniel Kahneman

But I am not discouraged. I do not despair for our country. I believe tonight, as I always have, that the essential decency, compassion and common sense of the American people will prevail. ~ Jimmy Carter

We have power as consumers. We can exercise that power all the time by not choosing to invest time, energy or funds to support the production of mass media images that do not reflect life-enhancing values, that undermine a love ethic. ~ Bell Hooks

If we define optimism broadly as the tendency to maintain a positive outlook, then realistic optimism is the tendency to maintain a positive outlook within the constraints of the available "measurable phenomena situated in the physical and social world" (DeGrandpre, 2000, p. 733). With respect to fuzzy meaning, realistic optimism involves enhancing and focusing on the favorable aspects of our experiences. Examples include being lenient in our evaluation of past events, actively appreciating the positive aspects of our current situation, and routinely emphasizing possible opportunities for the future. With respect to fuzzy knowledge, realistic optimism involves hoping, aspiring, and searching for positive experiences while acknowledging what we do not know and accepting what we cannot know. ~ Sandra L. Schneider

In 1965, a psychologist named Martin Seligman started shocking dogs.
He was trying to expand on the research of Pavlov--the guy who could make dogs salivate when they heard a bell ring. Seligman wanted to head in the other direction, and when he rang his bell, instead of providing food, he zapped the dogs with electricity. To keep them still, he restrained them in a harness during the experiment. After they were conditioned, he put these dogs in a big box with a little fence dividing it into two halves. He figured if the dog rang the bell, it would hop over the fence to escape, but it didn't. It just sat there and braced itself. They decided to try shocking the dog after the bell. The dog still just sat there and took it. When they put a dog in the box that had never been shocked before or had previously been allowed to escape and tried to zap it--it jumped the fence.
You are just like these dogs.
If, over the course of your life, you have experienced crushing defeat or pummeling abuse or loss of control, you convince yourself over time that there is no escape, and if escape is offered, you will not act--you become a nihilist who trusts futility above optimism.
Studies of the clinically depressed show that they often give in to defeat and stop trying. . .
Any extended period of negative emotions can lead to you giving in to despair and accepting your fate. If you remain alone for a long time, you will decide loneliness is a fact of life and pass up op ~ David McRaney

Optimism was for children. Once you reached adulthood then you had to join the rest of the world as a realist - life was a bag of shit you were expected to pay for. ~ NikNak

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

I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns, but I was convinced the best was ahead of me. ~ Ray Kroc

To be optimistic is NOT a blind sentiment in regard to the reality of life; but a hopeful view for the present moment ~ Quetzal

A schlemihl is a schlemihl. What can you "make" out of one? What can one make out of himself? You reach a point, and Profane knew he had reached it, where you know how much you can and cannot do. But every now and again he got attacks of acute optimism. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time. ~ W.S. Merwin

Start each day with a positive thought and a grateful heart. ~ Roy Bennett

Without passion, nobody can truly commit to anything and without optimism, positive outcomes become scarce. ~ Miguel Reynolds Brandao

Optimism is lack of information. ~ Faina Ranevskaya

The bright light of brilliance keeps the darkness away, but it can be so very exhausting. ~ Fennel Hudson

Beneath the damage she can still find moments of wonder, hints of joy. Would she even say she is optimistic? It isn't the shiny optimism that lifts Samuel, but it's a hard-won kind, born from the depths. A choice. It is enough. ~ Rae Meadows

It's better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right ~ Mark Twain

Among Evangelical Christians, all of whom await the Second Coming of Jesus, there are historically two camps: postmillennialists and premillennialists. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most were of the "post" variety, meaning that they expected the Messiah's return after the thousand-year reign of peace. In order to hasten His arrival, they set out to create that harmonious world here and now, fighting for the abolition of slavery, prohibition of alcohol, public education, and women's literacy.
The chaos of the Civil War and industrialization caused many evangelicals to rethink their optimism. They determined that Jesus would actually arrive before the final judgment. Therefore any efforts toward a just society here on earth were futile; what mattered was perfecting one's faith. As historian Randall Balmer writes, these believers "retreated into a theology of despair, one that essentially ceded the temporal world to Satan and his minions. ~ Mark Sundeen

Optimism is America's birthright ... There is no social problem Americans
dare not attack. No problem, that is, except one: about marriage,
and marriage alone, we despair. ~ Maggie Gallagher