I do believe that most men live lives of quiet desperation. For despair, optimism is the only practical solution. Hope is practical. Because eliminate that and it's pretty scary. Hope at least gives you the option of living.
~By Harry Nilsson ~
If pessimism is despair, optimism is cowardice and stupidity. Is there any need to choose between them?
~By Francis Parker Yockey ~
Optimism is the opium of the people.
~By Milan Kundera ~
And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.
~By Vernor Vinge ~
Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.
~By William James ~
I always admired Walt's optimism. He seemed to know the direction he was going to. When I was at the studio, I remember he kept driving all of us back down to a more fundamental level all the time.
~By John Hench ~
There's probably a little greater case for pessimism than optimism. But I do not rule out optimism.
~By Jim Leach ~
Always the eternal optimist, President Reagan instilled confidence and optimism at a time both were in short supply in our country.
~By Jim Ramstad ~
I have a real sense of optimism that we are revolutionizing the way we do politics in this country.
~By Joan Blades ~
Emerson then incarnated the moral optimism, the progress, and the energy of the American spirit.
~By Howard Mumford Jones ~
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.
~By Richard M. DeVos ~
The failure of national economic policy is costing us more than jobs; it has begun to weaken that uniquely American spirit of risk-taking, large ambition, and optimism about the future. We must rally them now to bold departures that rebuild our national morale as well as our material prosperity.
~By Mitch Daniels ~
With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.
~By Studs Terkel ~
World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.
~By Stephen Ambrose ~
Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.
~By Antonio Gramsci ~
The place where optimism flourishes most is the lunatic asylum.
~By Havelock Ellis ~
For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you.
~By Krzysztof Kieslowski ~
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.
~By Linda Lingle ~
Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
~By Norman Cousins ~
The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.
~By Billy Connolly ~
There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end ofthe search for the ultimate laws of nature.
~By Stephen Hawking ~
No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.
~By William Ralph Inge ~
We must return optimism to our parenting. To focus on the joys, not the hassles; the love, not the disappointments; the common sense, not the complexities.
~By Fred G. Gosman ~
I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.
~By Roberto Rossellini ~
Post-modernism is modernism with the optimism taken out.
~By Robert Hewison ~
I find nothing more depressing than optimism.
~By Paul Fussell ~
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
~By Oscar Wilde ~
My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.
~By Abdul Kalam ~
The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable.
~By Margery Allingham ~
Comedy is acting out optimism.
~By Robin Williams ~
Optimism is the key.
~By Will Champion ~
The young women in my classes are feisty and clever and believe, often with the passion of youthful optimism, that feminism is a battle already won. I worry for them - and for my daughters, too.
~By Louise Brown ~
I don't think you lead by pessimism and cynicism. I think you lead by optimism and enthusiasm and energy.
~By Patricia Ireland ~
The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead.
~By Robert Brault ~
Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
~By Colin Powell ~
The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
~By George Santayana ~
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.
~By Dietrich Bonhoeffer ~
Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
~By Ambrose Bierce ~
Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.
~By Arnold Bennett ~
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
~By Oscar Wilde ~
What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.
~By Raymond Aron ~
The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
~By Henry Ellis ~
Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
~By Voltaire ~
These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.
~By Virginia Woolf ~
Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.
~By Nicholas M. Butler ~
Optimism is not inherently a superior way of viewing the world. Certainly doctors will say it might be better for one's physical health to be an optimist. But, morally speaking it may not be appropriate in certain circumstances.
~By Todd Solondz ~
There was just this amazing individuality. It's just a whole different world of optimism and fearlessness, women taking off their bras and dancing around naked, and a political hopefulness and involvement.
~By Jill Clayburgh ~
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
~By Helen Keller ~
There is no fun in psychiatry. If you try to get fun out of it, you pay a considerable price for your unjustifiable optimism.
~By Harry Stack Sullivan ~
So this is the space during tutoring hours. It's very busy. Same principles: one-on-one attention, complete devotion to the students' work and a boundless optimism and sort of a possibility of creativity and ideas.
~By Dave Eggers ~
Optimism is inevitably the last hope of the defeated.
~By Albert Meltzer ~
Through my optimism I naturally prefer and capture the beauty in life.
~By Leni Riefenstahl ~
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.
~By George Stephanopoulos ~
My optimism for life carried through my work.
~By John Dyer ~
What we can borrow from Ronald Reagan... is that great sense of optimism. He led by building on the strengths of America, not running America down.
~By Rudy Giuliani ~
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.
~By John Hench ~
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
~By Henry Rollins ~
My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society.
~By Natan Sharansky ~
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.
~By Lucille Ball ~
The biggest emotion in creation is the bridge to optimism.
~By Brian May ~
Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.
~By Twyla Tharp ~
That is why, with optimism instead of fear, all those who want to see Puerto Rico's status resolved should seek the truth about each option, including the upside and the downside of each.
~By Dick Thornburgh ~
Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant - the digitalis of failure.
~By Elbert Hubbard ~
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.
~By Earle Brown ~
There is only one optimist. He has been here since man has been on this earth, and that is man himself. If we hadn't had such a magnificent optimism to carry us through all these things, we wouldn't be here. We have survived it on our optimism.
~By Edward Steichen ~
Optimism is the foundation of courage.
~By Nicholas M. Butler ~
I am not a prophet in any sense of the word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism.
~By Herbert Croly ~
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
~By Vaclav Havel ~
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