Quotes About Optimism

Many of the most successful men I have known have never grown up. They have retained bubbling-over boyishness. They have relished wit, they have indulged in humor. They have not allowed ‘dignity’ to depress them into moroseness. Youthfulness of spirit is the twin brother of optimism, and optimism is the stuff of which American business success is fashioned. Resist growing up!

It was not possible for us to produce the same optimism and the same kind of humour or irony. Actually, it was not irony. Lichtenstein is not ironic but he does have a special kind of humour. That's how I could describe it: humour and optimism. For Polke and me, everything was more fragmented. But how it was broken up is hard to describe.

I returned to Kabul after a 27-year absence. I came away with some optimism but not as much as I had hoped for. The two major issues in Afghanistan are a lack of security outside Kabul (particularly in the south and east) and the powerful warlords ruling over the provinces with little or no allegiance to the central government. The other rapidly rising concern is the narcotic trade which, if not dealt with, may turn Afghanistan into another Bolivia or Colombia.

New York City revived around the team. I don't think you can look at the recovery of New York from the 1970s without, on some level, talking about Steinbrenner. Even if you're just talking about the feel of the city, he was part of a creation of a new sense of optimism.

Every person has the power to make others happy. Some do it simply by entering a room others by leaving the room. Some individuals leave trails of gloom; others, trails of joy. Some leave trails of hate and bitterness; others, trails of love and harmony. Some leave trails of cynicism and pessimism; others trails of faith and optimism. Some leave trails of criticism and resignation; others trails of gratitude and hope. What kind of trails do you leave?

Hope and optimism aren't just attitudes, they are life strategies.

Optimism is not the ability to live on the highest branch. It is the faith to learn to fly.

You have to open up to the world and learn optimism...Contentment with the past, happiness with the present, and hope for the future. Learned optimisim.

I trust, and I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme- Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow and keeps life afoot. I make a friend of this indefinable force…this is my religion of optimism.

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life. If, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.

In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your president. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.

The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter.

I enjoy the optimism of design, even though we can see it as doomed. But I'm telling most people that I'm not writing about design any more this year. It makes no sense at all during the recession unless you write about sustainable or ethical design-very basic things, like how to get clean water in countries with a shortage of it.

Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.

As long as I'm needed. I'll be ready to serve. I look forward with optimism. We need the Jews here. Move to Israel! Move to Israel!

What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run.

Real optimism knows the difficulties but believes they can be overcome.

Optimism, positivity and faith create the foundation from which success can be built.

Optimism isnt funny unless you are laughing at the person, whereas extreme pessimism is extremely funny. Its exaggeration.

There is something in the American project, something in simple American oratory, something in the hope and idealism of this frustrating and contradictory nation that still makes my spirits soar and my heart leap with optimism and belief. If only they understood how to make a cup of tea.

I've worked with farmers in Zimbabwe who've lost their lands. I've worked with people in Venezuela, under threat of kidnappings, whose external world is unstable. But they have very strong social connections with their family and friends. And as a result, they're able to maintain a greater level of happiness and optimism than I've seen from bankers, consultants, or salespeople who are on the road all the time, who follow jobs separated from their families, and, as a result, find themselves missing out on the happiness that comes from those very connections that they severed.

I think optimism and humour are key words for me to make the films accessible, which means they can really travel and be seen by as many people as possible.

Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

Today we confront the future with optimism from a founded hope for the Iraqi people - in freedom

Hope transforms pessimism into optimism. Hope is invincible.

I hope the millions of people I've touched have the optimism and desire to share their goals and hard work and persevere with a positive attitude.

But before looking to the future, let's glance back at the road we've traveled these past two years because that is the source of much of the optimism we are all feeling about the future.

In all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple days of hopelessness. Future scientists will call it the Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case history of chasing rainbows.

There's a new and virulent cultural virus ripping through the world. . . . The symptoms of those infected include attacks of optimism, strong feelings of community, lower stress levels and outbreaks of pronoia - the sneaking feeling that someone is conspiring behind their backs to help them.

You would have to say his number one accomplishment has been to inspire a sense of confidence in the country... That confidence, that optimism, not only gives President Obama a political cushion, but it could have a real world economic impact.

That is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to music that made me want to cry. I closed that chamber myself, for all the usual reasons. And now I seem to have made a pact with some philistine devil: if I don't attempt to re-open it, I will be allowed just enough energy and optimism to get through a working day without wanting to hang myself.

We need more pessimism that the future might be a lot worse, and we need more optimism that the future might be better.

No one has ever been able to convince me that optimism is not preferable to pessimism.

So far there has been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology for knowledge; on this point, at least, every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all tyrannized over by logic, and this is optimism in its essence.

but sometimes optimism is the only drug that works. But it’s sadly temporary in its effects.

Through training, practice, and a deep sense of optimism, architects see opportunities where others only see a void. This has been the driving principle behind Architecture for Humanity since our founding.

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!

Placebos are like the lollipop of optimism, but we can do much better by dealing directly with the mind... And it works!

[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could.

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.

Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push. A smile. A world of optimism and hope. A "you can do it" when things are tough.

The true Christian can nurture a trustful optimism, because he is certain of not walking alone. In sending us Jesus, the eternal Son made man, God has drawn near to each of us. In Christ he has become our travelling companion.

He'd always had that fearless optimism that made cynics like me squirm. I wondered if it was enough for both of us. I would never know from here, though. And time was passing. Crucial minutes and seconds, each one capable of changing everything.

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

Everything is a meaningless struggle against nothing and when people say that the world has become a better place that is a false development-optimism. Nothing exists which ever becomes better. Everything stays the same. Somehow, there is nothing. That is so sad. Nothing to come to. Everything is an illusion. A very sweet illusion.

The dreams of the 1960s began to disappear in the 1970s. The economy collapsed, and so did the optimism of the Metabolists.

The near cousin of optimism is hope: knowing the steps needed to get to a goal and having the energy to pursue those steps. It is a primal motivating force, and its absence is paralyzing.

Let Christ turn your natural optimism into Christian hope, your energy into moral virtue, your good will into genuine self-sacrificin g love! This is the path you are called to take. This is the path to overcoming all that threatens hope, virtue and love in your lives and in your culture. In this way your youth will be a gift to Jesus and to the world.