quotations about optimism
The world cures alike optimist and the misanthrope.
BULWER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that ensures the successful outcome of the venture.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. Yes, I'm a great optimist. but, when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst case scenario. I call it 'the eaten by wolves factor.' If I do something, what's the most terrible thing that could happen? Would I be eaten by wolves? One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist, is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose.
RANDY PAUSCH
The Last Lecture
Thus will we deal with life, my little help-meet. Will we not, eh? What though it blink at us like an owl that is blinded by the sun, we will yet force it to smile.
LEONID ANDREYEV
The Life of Man
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.
HELEN KELLER
Optimism
Optimism is good for overcoming obstacles that are part of daily life, but over-optimism can blind us to adversities that need addressing.
MICHAEL SHERMER
"Defying the Doomsayers", Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2012
Optimism is a product of a man's heart rather than of his head; of his emotions rather than of his reason; and on that account is rather frowned on by physicians.
EDWARD L. TRUDEAU
"Value of Optimism in Medicine", The Journal of the American Medial Association, 1910
Protracted optimism must eventually end in hopeless fatuity.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Some people argue against both optimism and pessimism in favor of so-called realistic thinking. They distrust optimism on the grounds that it causes us to sugercoat problems, discount risks, and exaggerate the upside. Pessimism, on the other hand, is criticized as too downbeat, de-energizing, and generally damaging in its impact. This crown prefers realism as the neutral and objective middle ground.
PRICE PRITCHETT
Hard Optimism
But optimism is more than abundant food, more even than good digestion; it is a hopeful philosophy that is justified by things as they have been and things as they are. So that the answer to the question: "Is life worth living?" depends not entirely upon the liver as the cynic has said, but upon our acceptance of the unavoidable, our courage to combat adversity and wrong, our seeking out and appreciating what is good.
WILLIAM KENT
Here's Hoping; the Optimism of Experience
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.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
Letters and Papers from Prison
I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?
EPICTETUS
Discourses
Optimism works in conjunction with your life energy, strengthening your roots and keeping you grounded, stimulating the growth of new shoots and the development of new branches that form your life, energizing the creation that is you.
DANA LIGHTMAN
Power Optimism
The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.
MARK TWAIN
notebooks, 1902
Because optimism does at times with some ill-balanced natures lead to disaster, is that anything against optimism? Not at all, that is no more against optimism than that it could be claimed that foolhardiness is against courage. Foolhardiness is an unreasoning exhibition of a valuable human instinct, but neither courage nor optimism are to be condemned, because, acting without proper control, they may lead to melancholy results. The credulous ignorant optimist may find his ruin among the swindles of the company promoter, but that is no more an indictment of optimism than that such a foolhardy feat as looping the loop is a reflection upon courage. No, optimism is no more to be reckoned by its failures than courage by the desperate ventures of foolhardiness.
FRANK CHALLEN
"Optimism: The Creed of Progress", The Westminster Review, September 1904
Optimism is the tendency to look on the bright side of things; it is the belief that the bright side is the natural side; it is the belief that the sum total of the forces at work in the world are making for righteousness; it is the belief that man is so constituted that one sunshiny day makes him forget many cloudy days by which it was preceded.
ELWIN BIRD JOHNSON
An Optimistic Equation and Other Optimism
Like pride, blind optimism may go before a fall.
DAVID G. MYERS
Exploring Psychology
I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist ... or maybe even a pessimist. The glass has water in it; that's all I know.
CLAY AIKEN
interview, Ability Magazine
My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.
ELLEN WILLIS
"Tom Wolfe's Failed Optimism", Beginning to See the Light: Pieces of a Decade
To me it seems not unreasonable to find a re-enforcement of optimism, a renewal of courage and hope, in the modern theory that man has mounted to what he is from the lowest step of potentiality, through toilsome grades of ever-expanding existence, even thought it have been by a spiral stairway, mainly dark or dusty, with loop-holes at long intervals only, and these granting but a narrow and one-sided view.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Progress of the World