Quotes About Optimism

Christian optimism is not a sugary optimism, nor is it a mere human confidence that everything will turn out all right. It is an optimism that sinks its roots into an awareness of our freedom, and the sure knowledge of the power of grace. It is an optimism that leads us to make demands on ourselves, to struggle to respond at every moment to God's call.

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead In fact maybe there is a lesson there for how we should approach the future...with fourteen parts optimism - anticipating what could go right and the benefits - and one part pessimism - anticipating what could go wrong so we can avoid them.

History demonstrates that participants in financial markets are susceptible to waves of optimism. Excessive optimism shows the seeds of its own reversal in the form of imbalances that tend to grow over time.

Hope differs from optimism. Hope does not arise from being told to "think positively," or from hearing an overly rosy forecast. Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality.

Complaining begets more complaints. Anger begets more anger. And optimism begets more optimism.

To me, curiosity is married to optimism. And that's where a lot of my motivation comes from. A lot of my way out of depression and anxiety is that intersection between optimism and curiosity. Because it means taking a step forward with the hope that there will be discovery.

Some people argue against both optimism and pessimism in favor of so-called realistic thinking. They distrust optimism on the grounds that it causes us to sugercoat problems, discount risks, and exaggerate the upside. Pessimism, on the other hand, is criticized as too downbeat, de-energizing, and generally damaging in its impact. This crown prefers realism as the neutral and objective middle ground.

There's probably a little greater case for pessimism than optimism. But I do not rule out optimism.

Optimism is cowardice.

Organizations may be better able to tame optimism than individuals are.

We were that generation called silent, but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period's official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man's fate.

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

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.

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.

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!

The whole scale and scope of the decorating and fashion business in this country are incomparably grander than in London. Whats thrilling about America in general, and the New York fashion scene in particular, is its optimism. It makes the whole experience energizing and uplifting.

Real optimism has reason to complain but prefers to smile.

Optimism is a tool with a certain clear set of benefits: it fights depression, it promotes achievement and produces better health.

Entrepreneurial business favours the open mind. It favours people whose optimism drives them to prepare for many possible futures, pretty much purely for the joy of doing so.

Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than any other.

Unsatisfied desire is the characteristic feature of human life. That is the common fact out of which both pessimism and optimism are constructed. Dwell on the impossibility of ever getting a state of complete and permanent satisfaction with what you have, and you become a pessimist. Dwell on the opportunity for endless growth and conquest which this same fact makes possible, and you become an optimist.

As idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off.

LA runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy... It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weatherwise, socially and professionally.

Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.

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.

If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet... [at least for your own situation. Blind optimism is just as foolish. The solution is a rigorously balanced, rational outlook.]

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!

The world we live in is a world of mingled good and evil. Whether it is chiefly good or chiefly bad depends on how we take it. To look at the world in such a way as to emphasize the evil is the art of pessimism. To look at it in such a way as to bring out the good, and throw the evil into the background, is the art of optimism. The facts are the same in either case. It is simply a question of perspective and emphasis.

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

I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Like pride, blind optimism may go before a fall.

Optimism is inevitably the last hope of the defeated

My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I'm luckier than other mortals, and they sure don't come from visualizing victory. They're the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it. Like most astronauts, I'm pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I've thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That's the power of negative thinking.

Spend two minutes a day scanning the world for three new things you're grateful for. And do that for 21 days, The reason why that's powerful is you're training your brain to scan the world in a new pattern, you're scanning for positives, instead of scanning for threats. It's the fastest way of teaching optimism.

I think optimism is in the eyes of the beholder.

And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.

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.

Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair.

Drizzt Do'Urden had followed a line of precepts based upon discipline and ultimate optimism. He fought for a better world because he believed that a better world could and would be made. He had never held any illusions that he would change the world, of course, or even a substantial portion of it, but he always held strongly that fighting to better just his own little pocket of the world was a worthwhile cause.

The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue.

Happiness is the twin sister of optimism and the twin brother of contentment.

I can't understand how anyone is able to paint without optimism.

I'm moderately optimistic. We Americans are an enormous country with more than 300 million people so there's reason for optimism.

There are certain principles, all of which center around building systems and practices that teach workforces how to internalize and master these three attributes, that are realistic optimism, subservience to purpose, and finding order in chaos. Its important to note than one never fully masters them, the pursuit lasts a lifetime, but it is a very gratifying pursuit.

I wished I could share my own optimism.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

Optimism, that is healthy in its application, will inevitably result in better physical and emotional health.

I think optimism is whether you are still exhilarated by life, whether you are curious, whether you still believe there is possibility.