Quotes About Pessimism

Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.

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?

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.

Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist-a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist-only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression.

The official strategy is defensive pessimism, always.

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

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.

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

Americans want action for their money. They are fascinated by its self- reproducing qualities if it's put to work. Gold- hoarding goes against the American grain; it fits in better with European pessimism than with America's traditional optimism.

My pessimism has never been flabby.

If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves?

I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an explanation of life or a guide to life. Novels are life, or they are nothing.

That's why our comics are important: they're pointing things out and laughing at the same time. There have been horrible, horrible times in history. They're mostly horrible times. But not to laugh? Not to find humor in something like dark optimism/bright pessimism - I think that's sad, frankly.

Blending hard-bitten realism with long-view optimism, Obama said that every 20 or 30 years brings a new cycle of pessimism in America.

The refuge from pessimism is the good men and women at any time existing in the world, -they keep faith and happiness alive.

Pessimism, she is a fond friend of yours, yes?" - That's uncalled for. I barely know her. Mere acquaintances, at best.

It is far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism.

When the outlook is steeped in pessimism, I remind myself, "Two and two still make four, and you can't keep humankind down for long."

I have a hunch that our obsession with photography arises from an unspoken pessimism; it is our nature to believe the good things will not last. . . But photos provide a false sense of security> like our flawed memory, they are guaranteed to fade. . . . We take photographs in order to remember, but it is in the nature of a photograph to forget (pg 157)

Every optimistic path will take you farther, faster, and to greater altitude than any road of pessimism.

As a student of conservation biology, I believe that characteristics with survival value will ultimately prevail. There is no survival value in pessimism. If you think failure is inevitable, that view will probably become self-fulfilling.

Our life as consumers seems light years away from that of our grandparents. But you don't change human nature. Optimism, for me, is the belief that we can spread the opportunity for everyone to be fully human. Sustainability, like music, is an impulse to make sense of the world around us. It is core to our humanity. If you only like one composer, or think all the best music has already been written, you have reason for pessimism. If not, it is within us to have good reason for hope