Quotes About Optimism

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

Those people who say that America is finite are some sense right. The environmental movement, for example, has a great wisdom to it: we need to protect, to preserve, to shelter as much as we need to develop. But I think this always has to be juxtaposed against the optimism of old, which is now represented in part by immigrants. I would like to see America achieve a kind of balance between optimism and tragedy, between possibility and skepticism.

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.

Optimism is denial, so face the facts and move on

Optimism may sometimes be delusional, but pessimism is always delusional.

Winning has nothing to do with racing. Most days don't have races anyway. Winning is about struggle and effort and optimism, and never, ever, ever giving up.

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

In America, if your next-door neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want one too. But in England, if your neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want him to die in a fiery accident. That's a quote from someone else, but there's something about American optimism, that feeling you can do anything if you're at least middle class in America. If I can have a writing career, anyone can. There's nothing special about me.

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.

Hope without a strategy doesn’t generate leadership. Leadership comes when your hope and your optimism are matched with a concrete vision of the future and a way to get there. People won’t follow you if they don’t believe you can get to where you say you’re going.

What happens from about 1954 to the late 1980s, is that we see a huge wave of optimism that school desegregation is going to be the way to improve educational outcomes for poor children of color. And we see a consensus build on the left and in the center that this is going to be a transformative education movement like none other we've seen in American history.

In optimism there is magic. In pessimism there is nothing.

I'm a pessimist, but I have many painstakingly applied coats of optimism.

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition. By the year 2050, when the conflict began, the world had fallen upon fearful, superstitious times.

But Walt and him shared the same kind of optimism. Walt believed in himself, and he was optimistic about what he wanted to do. He just knew it will be okay, and Dali was the same way. They had a great deal in common that way.

As I write in 2012 we certainly do not believe that it is over yet, and the worst may be yet to come. Efforts by governments to solve the underlying problems responsible for the crisis have still not gotten very far, and the 'stress tests' that governments have used to encourage optimism about our financial institutions were of questionable thoroughness.

I have a real sense of optimism that we are revolutionizing the way we do politics in this country.

Positive emotion can be about the past, the present, or the future. The positive emotions about the future include optimism, hope, faith, and trust. Those about the present include joy, ecstasy, calm, zest, ebullience, pleasure, and (most importantly) flow; these emotions are what most people usually mean when they casually-but much too narrowly-talk about "happiness." The positive emotions about the past include satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity.

Many of the qualities that come so effortlessly to dogs - loyalty, devotion, selflessness, unflagging optimism, unqualified love - can be elusive to humans.

Consider, if you will, the morning boner. What a metaphor of hope and renewal! How can anyone give way to despair when one’s groin greets each day with such a gala spectacle of physical optimism?

Optimism is in short supply in the Middle East, but what I do think is the administration needs to step up its act. We should use military strikes against ISIS when they threaten the Shia areas or Baghdad. We need to accelerate very rapidly, and we have ways to do it, aid to the Syrians, and we need to be more active, with results, not simply inputs. That is absolutely important right now, because people are questioning our will, not our capabilities.

A Positive Mental Attitude is the right mental attitude. What is the right mental attitude? It is most often comprised of the "plus" characteristics symbolized by such words as faith, integrity, hope, optimism, courage, initiative, generosity, tolerance, tact, kindliness, and good common sense. A person with positive mental attitude aims for high goals and constantly strives to achieve them.

What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.

It is not possible, given any degree of optimism and generosity in regard to people in general, to set a time limit on creative reflection or a limitation on the number of people involved in the creation.

I suppose I'd characterize myself as having a faith-based optimism. My faith is parental and Darwinian.

Does not a misplaced optimism exist, common to all mankind, leading on to false conviction that social engagements, if dated sufficiently far ahead, will never really materialize?

I gave (my drivers) three things: a sense of optimism, a creative environment, and the ultimate motivator-competition. By competing with each other in-house, we wound up beating our rivals.

Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming; feedback is the treatment.

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.

The secret to my success has been optimism tempered by anger.

There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.

If we lean into what we love instead of soldiering toward what we 'should,' our pace quickens, our energy rises, optimism sets in. What we love is nutritious for us.

May the pain you have known and the conflict you have experienced give you the strength to walk through life facing each new situation with courage and optimism.

Now the basic impulse behind existentialism is optimistic, very much like the impulse behind all science. Existentialism is romanticism, and romanticism is the feeling that man is not the mere he has always taken himself for. Romanticism began as a tremendous surge of optimism about the stature of man. Its aim - like that of science - was to raise man above the muddled feelings and impulses of his everyday humanity, and to make him a god-like observer of human existence.

Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.

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.

I never expect to lose. Even when I'm the underdog, I still prepare a victory speech. [Optimism through positive expectations can help to bring about what is desired and makes the wait more enjoyable.]

Optimism is a tonic. Pessimism is poison. Admittedly, every businessman must be realistic. He must gather facts, analyze them candidly and strive to draw logical conclusions, whether favorable or unfavorable. He must not engage in self-delusion. He must not view everything through rose-colored glasses. Granting this, the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation's destiny, by men willing to adventure to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.

Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.

I think you need optimism. I believe that's incredibly important that you be optimistic that you can do things different and still do them just as well. That's very important to success - just to have a positive outlook. I know it's not easy to do that.

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

I think the work is always personal. This album differs. It seems to be a lot more positive. It seems to have a certain amount of optimism about it.

Optimism sprouts from the knowledge that you are in control of your own life, not your past and not those around you. Part of being in control is taking responsibility for how you feel. This means not just admitting to uncomfortable feelings but then examining your circumstances to see what can be done to change these feelings at the source.

I am hoping for better times. That's how you know us hapless gardeners - by our dirty fingernails and our absurd, unquenchable optimism about next year.

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.