Pessimism Quotes Page 2

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead.

An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full;

the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be.

Always look on the bright side of life.

A pinch of praise is worth a pound of scorn.

A dash of encouragement is more helpful than a dipper of pessimism. A cup of kindness is better than a cupboard of criticism.

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption.

It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.

Pessimism negates the existing world.

Yet its negating is ambiguous. It can simply will decay and nothingness, but it can also renounce what exists and thus open a path for a new formation of the world.

If pessimism is despair, optimism is cowardice and stupidity.

Is there any need to choose between them?

If you believe that you are bad and unacceptable, you are unable to look back at your past with pleasure or your future with hope. Only bad things happened to you in the past, and only bad things will happen to you in the future.

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

When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and only then, have you grown old.

We live in the best of all possible worlds

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes.

If we see light at the end of the tunnel, it's the light of the oncoming train.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

I see nothing in the present situation that is either menacing or warrants pessimism... I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring, and that during this coming year the country will make steady progress.

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

The older books were quite light-hearted.

But I think most of my novels do end on a deep note of pessimism. Shadows seem to be closing in. The final conclusion isn't that life is wonderful and everything is bright and cheery and in the garden.

Pessimism has never done anything but tear down and destroy what optimism has built up.

Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.

True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself.

Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.

When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.

An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.

He realized at last that the arguments of pessimism were powerless to comfort him

Pessimism is the luxury of the powerful.

Pessimism is an excuse for not trying and a guarantee to a personal failure.

Many young Muslims see no opportunities for themselves and do not feel they have control over their lives or a stake in their nation's future. Such pessimism leads to disengagement. We risk losing a generation of young Muslims to apathy and extremism.

Pessimism is the product of a hostile social state.

Its answer is the substitution of a friendly social state. If this can be done it will disappear.

Mine is an enthusiastic and dionysian pessimism, like a flame that sets my vital exuberance ablaze, that mocks at any theoretical, scientific or moral prison.

We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism.

We must not let ourselves fall into the vortex of pessimism. Faith can move mountains!

Though I am alive now, I do not believe an old man's pessimism is nessessarily truer than a young man's optimism simply because it comes after. There are things a young man knows that are true and are not yet in the old man's power to recollect. Spring has its sappy wisdom.

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

I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox.

I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me’s no joke.