Optimism Quotes - Page 25

• It is not usually our ideas that make us optimistic or pessimistic, but it is our optimism or pessimism of physiological or pathological origin that makes our ideas.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Optimistic, Ideas, Pessimistic

  1913 The Tragic Sense of Life.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Lines, Littles

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• China was the most optimistic place I'd ever been. Everybody I met was pretty much convinced that their children would have it better than their parents had had it. It was like being in America in the 1950's, with this deep optimism about the future because everything was getting better, and that fascinated me.

  Neil Gaiman

  Children, Optimistic, America

  Source: collider.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• My aesthetic is derived from my point of view which is one of optimism and hope. The camera became a conduit for my need to create a more beautiful world around me.

  Mike Ruiz

  Beautiful, Views, Cameras

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, ie , concernedly and "responsibly." one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Survival, Despair

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.725, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.

  George Santayana

  Powerful, America, Intellectual

  George Santayana (1921). “Character & Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile, taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath. This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while laughs in the teeth of Death.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Laughing, Joy, Teeth

  THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH (1877). “FLOWER AND THORN”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Optimism has always seemed to me the cunning alibi of egoists, anxious to cover up their state of chronic self-satisfaction. They are optimists in order to avoid pitying other men and their misfortune. ~~ Yet pity is a vexed question.

  Georges Bernanos

  Men, Self, Order

  Georges Bernanos (1938). “A diary of my times”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nietzsche inveighs against every sort of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts of decadence. He preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a tragic culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in which the spirit of ancient Greece might be born again. He rejects the pessimism of Schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from exuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the Greeks.

  Georg Brandes

  Believe, Greek, Historical

  "An Essay on the Aristocratic Radicalism of Friedrich Nietzsche". Essay by Georg Brandes (1889), as translated in "Friedrich Nietzsche" by A.G. Chater (p. 21), 1914.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's a connection that's hard to explain. It's the feeling I get when I see someone shuffle up to meet me, or say something, and I can instantly tell by the cant of their head or by the movement of their arms -- and these are people who aren't even full-blown symptomatic -- that they're one of us. And the look they give me, it's not just gratitude -- I don't care about the gratitude -- but solidarity. And shared optimism. And a resiliency that just makes me think we're doing the right thing, and that this truly is a community.

  Michael J. Fox

  Gratitude, Thinking, People

  "The Givers : What Inspires Michael J. Fox? A Very Personal Interview". Interview with Marlo Thomas, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 5, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Law, Honey, Divine

  Aurobindo Ghose, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo Ashram (1994). “Essays divine and human with thoughts and aphorisms”, Lotus Press (WI)

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• I came out of my mom's stomach thinking I was going to own America.

  Caprice Bourret

  Mom, Thinking, America

  Chat show "Live from Studio Five", Channel 5 (UK) television, November 18, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As for comics, one has only to turn to the characteristic output of Marvel Comics, for the period from about 1961 to about 1975, to find not an expression of base and cynical impulses but of good, old-fashioned liberal humanism of a kind that may strike us today, God help us, as quaint, but which nevertheless appealed, in story after story, to ideals such as tolerance, technological optimism, and self-sacrifice for the benefit of others.

  Michael Chabon

  Sacrifice, Self, Expression

  Unpublished Letter of Complaint to The New York Review of Books,

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One knows one's madnesses, by and large. By and large the knowledge is vacuous. The notion of naming the beast to conquer it is the idiot optimism of psychotherapy.

  Glen Duncan

  Idiot, Madness, Conquer

  4 Copy quote

• Clinton's major problem, and the two aren't separable really because there is hope in the country, the hope - - optimism has slipped dramatically, make no mistake about every measurement shows that. But the hope is still there. Hope is with him. People want change. They see him as the best chance for change.

  Mark Shields

  Country, Mistake, Two

  "David Gergen and Mark Shields on Bill Clinton's 100 Days". "PBS Newshour" with Jim Lehrer, www.pbs.org. April 29, 1993.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the mistakes we'll make because we're human beings is to believe that your vision is a fact. That's the natural optimism of human beings.

  Steve Blank

  Mistake, Believe, Vision

  Source: www.pbs.org

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is. A pessimistic attitude can never create the calm and serene smile which blossoms on the lips of Bodhisattvas and all those who obtain the way.

  Nhat Hanh

  Attitude, Reality, Thinking

  "The Miracle of Mindfulness". Book by Thich Nhat Hanh, 1999.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• What would you call America's most priceless asset? Surely not its limitless natural resources, not its matchless national wealth, not its unequalled store of gold, not its giant factories, not its surpassing railroads, not its unprecedented volume of cheap power. Is not its most priceless asset the character of its people, their indomitable self-confidence, their transcendent vision, their sleepless initiative and, perhaps above all, their inherent, irrepressible optimism?

  B. C. Forbes

  Character, Self Confidence, America

  4 Copy quote

• So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Evil, Way

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.101, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Optimism can be more powerful than a battery of artillery or squadron of tanks. It can be contagious and it's necessary to being a leader.

  Rick Hillier

  Powerful, Leader, Tanks

  7 Copy quote

• Learning to deal with setbacks, and maintaining the persistence and optimism necessary for childhood's long road to mastery are the real foundations of lasting self-esteem.

  Lilian Katz

  Children, Real, Self Esteem

  32 Copy quote

• She had me at Sweet Valley High. Gay playfully crosses the borders between pop culture consumer and critic, between serious academic and lighthearted sister-girl, between despair and optimism, between good and bad. . . . How can you help but love her?

  Melissa Harris-Perry

  Girl, Sweet, Gay

  4 Copy quote

• Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.

  Erich Fromm

  Despair, Pessimism, Form

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.725, Open Road Media

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Optimism will grow like a flower if the soil be properly prepared.

  Arthur Lynch

  Flower, Soil, Grows

  Arthur Lynch (1921). “Moods of Life: Popular Psychological Studies of Affairs of Every Day”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Happiness is the twin sister of optimism and the twin brother of contentment.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Happiness, Brother, Contentment

  4 Copy quote