Quotes About Optimism

There are really two kinds of optimism. There's the complacent, Pollyanna optimism that says "don't worry - everything will be just fine" and that allows one to just lay back and do nothing about the problems around you. Then there's what we call dynamic optimism. That's an optimism based on action.

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.

Even bad teams have optimism. You don't want to take away the optimism so early in the season. The Bad News Bears coach wouldn't even tell (his team) that.

Magic enables man to carry out with confidence his important tasks, to maintain his poise and his mental integrity in fits of anger, in the throes of hate, of unrequited love, of despair and anxiety. The function of magic is to ritualize man's optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear. Magic expresses the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism.

For action, whatever its immediate purpose, also implies relief at doing something, anything, and the joy of exertion. This is the optimism that is inherent in, and proper and indispensable to action, for without it nothing would ever be undertaken. It in no way suppresses the critical sense or clouds the judgment. On the contrary this optimism sharpens the wits, it creates a certain perspective and, at the last moment, lets in a ray of perpendicular light which illuminates all one's previous calculations, cuts and shuffles them and deals you the card of success, the winning number.

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

A company that was I think the one I learned the most from in Wall Street 2, just in terms of my own character in and the kind of firm he worked in, was John Thomas Financial. There it's like warriors in an arena getting ready for battle. Thomas Belesis just fires these guys up like there is no tomorrow, and I absolutely got addicted to that optimism and adrenaline and that "We're going to do it, we're going to do it, buddy" kind of attitude that he had.

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.

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.

In Radical Optimism, Beatrice Bruteau sets forth a deep and shining vision of spirituality, one that guides the reader into the contemplative life and the very root of our being. Dr. Bruteau is a philosopher of great measure whose work should be required reading for all who seek the deepest truth about themselves.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.

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.

We should be holy people eager to greet our Lord when He returns, ready at any moment for the trumpet's call, people of optimism, busy in evangelism, hands to the plow, eyes on the prize.

Optimism is the ability to focus on where we're going, not where we're coming from.

I do not believe that true optimism can come about except through tragedy.

Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.

Optimism is a competitive advantage.

But hey, what's life without a little adversity?" That had to have been the fakest attempt at optimism since my fourth grade teacher tried reasoning that we were better off without the dead kids in our class because it'd mean more turns on the playground swings for the rest of us.

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.

Perpetual optimism is annoying. It is a sign that you are not paying attention.

Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.

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.

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

Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.

I've lived in Washington now for 44 years, and that's a lot of folly to witness up close. Whatever confidence and optimism I felt towards the central government when I got here on January 1, 1970 has pretty much dissipated at the hands of the government.

When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building.

Optimism is a seed sown in the soil of faith; pessimism is a seed hoarded in the vault of doubt.

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

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.

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

Buddhism is a path of supreme optimism, for one of its basic tenets is that no human life or experience is to be wasted or forgotten, but all should be transformed into a source of wisdom and compassionate living.

CEOs must master three essential attributes, realistic optimism, subservience to purpose, and finding order in chaos. One's capacity in each determines their ability to cope with today's business environment.

If pessimism is despair, optimism is cowardice and stupidity. Is there any need to choose between them?

Success is found balanced between optimism and realism, where it is unhindered by the weight of pessimism.

Pessimism is a losing strategy. Leadership demands both confidence and optimism in abundance.

Half a century ago, Ronald Reagan, the man whose relentless optimism inspired me to enter politics, famously said that he didn't leave the Democratic Party; the party left him. I can certainly relate. I didn't leave the Republican Party; it left me.

Optimism is evidence-based.

I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.

Optimism is a cure for many things.

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.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Politics has always been the art of the possible. Today it's too often the art of the probable - tinkering around the edges without any greater vision, without a sense of optimism and imagination.

In the eulogy by the graveside, I told everyone how my sister and I used to sing to each other on our birthday. I told them that, when I thought of my sister, I could still hear her laughter, sense her optimism, and feel her faith. I told them that my sister was the kindest person I;ve ever known, and that the world was a sadder place without her in it. And finally, I told them to remember my sister with a smile, like I did, for even though she was being buried near my parents, the best parts of her would always stay alive, deep within our hearts.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.

Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimism can only offer the empty consolation of being right.

Just be comfortable. Sometimes, when open up for a bigger artist at a conventional concert, you can feel unwelcome. But when you're playing a festival, people come to see music in general - so don't be fearful. The people are there to enjoy and discover new music so approach the show with confidence and optimism.

There isn't a sense of well-being and optimism about the nation's future, but that hasn't attached itself to the Democrats for some reason. They are not accountable. It certainly hasn't attached itself to Obamacare. That's why Hillary Clinton can run around and talk about the need to improve the economy. She ought to be dead politically on that score right there. She ought not be able to cite the economy at all as a positive. She ought not have any credibility at all on the economy.

In Ronald Reagans case, he always bore with him this extraordinary ability to radiate confidence, optimism, clarity, a blitheness of spirit, in what other people saw as chaos. And after the 1970s, that was catnip.