Quotes About Optimism

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 and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things are gonna be better, much more rational, deeply secular, whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, "It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever." That's hope. I'm a prisoner of hope, though. Gonna die a prisoner of hope.

I don't know how you bridge that contradiction, but I felt that Barack Obama was sincere. It didn't feel like a line to me. You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that's, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.

I am an adult; deliberately naïve, dewy-eyed optimism is not the proper posture for a responsible adult, is it?

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

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.

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.

Optimism, unaccompanied by personal effort, is merely a state of mind and not fruitful.

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 idea of The Boy Vs. The Cynic is the tension between the wide-eyed optimism in youthfulness where you think nothing can go wrong, "I've got the world ahead of me. I'm gonna be a go-getter.

Firm and patient optimism always yields its rewards.

You know, you have to start with hope...you don't get anywhere in this country without hope. So it's a necessity. What Barack says is that people have to understand hope isn't just blind optimism. It isn't passive. It isn't just sitting there waiting for things to get better. Hope is the vision that you have to have. It's the inspiration that moves people into action...There are more people engaged in this political process in this year than we've seen in my lifetime. And it is all because of hope because people believe in the possibility of something unseen.

The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.

In "Mother-Father-God," I talk about how the new thought movement led me to be superstitious. I think that might resonate with a lot of Americans, the superstition around optimism, like 'don't say anything negative' because you might jinx yourself with your thinking.

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

They [Americans] want to believe that Good and Evil can be defined in precise categories, that Good is already, or will be easily achieved. ... if this optimism appears too superficial, they will try to create a kind of anti-God: the U.S.S.R. That is Evil, and it only needs to be annihilated to re-establish the reign of Good.

I know I drive some people crazy with what seems like ridiculous optimism, but it has always worked for me.

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.

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

Only from the perspective of such a utopia is it possible to use the concepts of pessimism and optimism with full justification: an optimist is someone who thinks that on planet number five the history of mankind will be less bloody. A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise.

Vietnam was an exercise in mistaken idealism Iraq in cynical money-making. And there's no optimism or idealism now -- Americans are tired of knowledge. Our leaders, the C-students from Yale, know this. We're proud of being ignorant that leaves virtue at our core. We aren't frazzled by knowledge like foreigners, so we can be trusted.

I have an optimism about what people are willing to do. The greatest force in the world today, believe it or not, are these countless groups of people in every country almost... that are doing things to protect their local environment and to try and protect the earth.

Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

Optimism is necessary even if you don't instinctively feel it.

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.

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.

Promiscuity: optimism, free enterprise, mobility--the American Dream.

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 do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day.

The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

It can be said of optimism that while sometimes mistaken, it is never sadly mistaken.

I approach every problem with optimism.

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.]

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

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

For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and progress and action, but now, after first being 'for' society and then 'against' it, I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities. What a phrase - still it's a good phrase and a good view of life, and a man shouldn't accept any other; that much I've learned underground. Until some gang succeeds in putting the world in a strait jacket, its definition is possibility.

Money managers have to account for their actions to their shareholders, which means they have an undue fear of underperformance. We invest only our own money. Our investments are driven by optimism, not fear.

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

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

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.

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.

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist.

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.

I think if you talk to the experts in any field where you have to take on a unknown challenge, where you're going to be working on it for a long time you'd find that to work themselves up to their best performance and really throw themselves into it, you know, spend all these hours in there and ah, give it their... give it their best that optimism plays a role.

The primary ingredient for progress is optimism. The unwavering belief that something can be better drives the human race forward.

Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance;...in which case, we should either-optimistically-get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might-as pessimists-give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway, things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos?

There is abundant reason to believe that optimism - big, little, and in between - is useful to a person because positive expectations can be self-fulfilling.

Optimism and happiness are not the same thing, but they are becoming interchangeable, and it seemed to me that Voltaire's Candide gave me a way into something important happening in modern-day culture.