Optimism Quotes - Page 30

• Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire.

  Bruce Springsteen

  Fire, Light, Records

  "Bruce Springsteen: 'What was done to my country was un-American'". Interview with Fiachra Gibbons, www.theguardian.com. February 17, 2012.

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• I believe any success in life is made by going into an area with a blind, furious optimism.

  Sylvester Stallone

  Believe, Optimistic, Life Is

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• 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.

  Studs Terkel

  People, Despair, Alternatives

  Religion & Ethics Newsweekly Interview, www.pbs.org. December 19, 2003.

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• Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

  Jessamyn West

  Happiness, Truth, Attitude

  Jessamyn West (1957). “To see the dream”

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• Only the really young are fearless, have the optimism, the romanticism to take unimaginable risks.

  Olivia Wilde

  Fearless, Risk, Young

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• I've lived in Washington now for 44 years, and that's a lot of folly to witness up close. Whatever confidence and optimism I felt towards the central government when I got here on January 1, 1970 has pretty much dissipated at the hands of the government.

  George Will

  Government, Hands, Years

  "George Will's Libertarian Evolution". Interview with Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, reason.com. December, 2013.

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• I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Looks, Dread, Dogmatic

  "Robert Anton Wilson" by Michael Carlson, www.theguardian.com. January 17, 2007.

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• A house without books is like a room without windows.

  Horace Mann

  Life, Happiness, Attitude

  "The Duty of Owning Books". Book by Horace Mann, 1859.

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• Optimism is a cure for many things.

  Michael J. Fox

  Cures

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• Over time, I have come to see the work of literature less as narrating the world than "seeing the world with words." From the moment he begins to use words like colors in a painting, a writer can begin to see how wondrous and surprising the world is, and he breaks the bones of language to find his own voice. For this he needs paper, a pen, and the optimism of a child looking at the world for the first time.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Children, Color, Voice

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “Other Colours”, p.15, Faber & Faber

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• I'm inspired by the people I meet in my travels--hearing their stories, seeing the hardships they overcome, their fundamental optimism and decency. I'm inspired by the love people have for their children. And I'm inspired by my own children, how full they make my heart. They make me want to work to make the world a little bit better. And they make me want to be a better man.

  Barack Obama

  Family, Children, Heart

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• Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

  Mason Cooley

  Happiness, Attitude, Book

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• Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Life, Beauty, Running

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• I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I felt that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actor, kidding ourselves on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between those two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Real, Taken, Hands

  "The Rum Diary". Book by Hunter S. Thompson, 1998.

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• Cultivate an attitude of happiness. Cultivate a spirit of optimism. Walk with faith, rejoicing in the beauties of nature, in the goodness of those you love, in the testimony which you carry in your heart concerning things divine.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Attitude, Heart, Lds

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• My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to 'rejoice' as much as by anything else. Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue.

  C. S. Lewis

  Sadness, Humility, Thinking

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• For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

  Hermann Hesse

  Class, Contentment, Comfort

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.27, Macmillan

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• It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations- something that will help them make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own.

  Katherine Paterson

  Happiness, Children, Attitude

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• While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Flower, Optimistic, Inner Beauty

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• For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and progress and action, but now, after first being 'for' society and then 'against' it, I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities. What a phrase - still it's a good phrase and a good view of life, and a man shouldn't accept any other; that much I've learned underground. Until some gang succeeds in putting the world in a strait jacket, its definition is possibility.

  Ralph Ellison

  Country, Attitude, Hard Work

  Ralph Ellison (1980). “Invisible man”, Vintage

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• I've got nothing to do today but smile.

  Paul Simon

  Funny, Life, Happiness

  Song: The Only Living Boy In New York

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• Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.

  Andre Gide

  Profound, Sides

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• I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning. The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth and optimism.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Morning, Past, Insomnia

  P. G. Wodehouse (2011). “The Little Nugget”, p.40, The Floating Press

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• The past doesn't change no matter how much time you spend thinking about it. Good and bad all add up to the whole. Take away one piece, no matter how small, and the whole changes. Whether it's optimism, pessimism or fatalism, I don't spend my time wishing for the past to be different so present would be different, too. I control my future with what I choose now.

  Megan Hart

  Thinking, Past, Wish

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• I see America has infused you with the optimism that has made her so great

  Khaled Hosseini

  America, Made

  Khaled Hosseini (2011). “The Kite Runner: Rejacketed”, p.175, A&C Black

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