Optimist Quotes - Page 14

• But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Offering, Should Have, Ideas

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.155, Macmillan

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• I am a personal optimist but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.

  George Carlin

  Real, Views, Roots

  George Carlin (2007). “The Best of Brain Droppings”, p.11, Peter Pauper Press, Inc.

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• So what am I? I guess I would call myself a sober optimist...If you are not sober about the scale of the challenge, then you are not paying attention. But if you are not an optimist, you have no chance of generating the kind of mass movement needed to achieve the needed scale.

  Thomas Friedman

  Challenges, Attention, Movement

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• Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Funny, Motivational, Humorous

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• Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

  Emile M. Cioran

  Suicide, Succeed, Reason

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• I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.

  Cornel West

  Prisoner

  Twitter post from Jan 12, 2013

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• The optimist lives on the peninsula of infinite possibilities; the pessimist is stranded on the island of perpetual indecision.

  William Arthur Ward

  Optimistic, Islands, Infinite

  William Arthur Ward (1968). “Thoughts of a Christian Optimist: The Words of William Arthur Ward”

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• You are such an optimist. My Spidey-sense is tingling all over the place. (Tory) That’s from eating the ice cream. Relax. (Acheron) Relax. Trust me. It’ll be all right. Isn’t that how I ended up dead? (Danger) Stop feeding her anxiety. (Acheron) Anxiety. The Simi’s never eaten that before. Is that tasty? (Simi) Not really. (Danger) Oh. Maybe we should put barbecue sauce on it. Everything’s better with barbecue. (Simi)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Ice Cream, Anxiety, Relax

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• I'm an incurable optimist and a go-getter - it's in my nature to focus much more on what makes me happy than what makes me nervous.

  Demi Moore

  Focus, Nervous, Make Me Happy

  "Moore wants a baby with Kutcher". www.express.co.uk. September 3, 2009.

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• Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Two, Feelings, Forgiving

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• Find a way to say yes to things. Say yes to invitations to a new country, say yes to meet new friends, say yes to learning a new language, picking up a new sport. Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse, and even your kids. Even if it's a bit edgy, a bit out of your comfort zone, saying yes means that you will do something new, meet someone new, and make a difference in your life. Yes lets you stand out in a crowd, be the optimist, to stay positive, be the one everyone comes to. Yes is what keeps us all young.

  Eric Schmidt

  Country, Jobs, Mean

  UC Berkeley Commencement Address, news.berkeley.edu. May 12, 2012.

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• I asked her, "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" She looked at her watch and said, "I'm optimistic." "Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each others as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon." "Why do beautiful songs make you sad?" "Because they aren't true." "Never?" "Nothing is beautiful and true." She smiled, but in a way that wasn't just happy, and said, "You sound just like Dad.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Beautiful, Song, Dad

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.43, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Optimists enrich the present, enhance the future,challenge the improbable and attain the impossible

  William Arthur Ward

  Motivational, Challenges, Impossible

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• Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven.

  Alice Thomas Ellis

  Optimism, Heaven, Despair

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• Definitely not-you optimists just can't understand that a depressed person doesn't want you to try and cheer them up.It makes us sick." Brandon Sanderson(Elantris)

  Brandon Sanderson

  Cheer, Depressed Person, Sick

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• The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

  Karl Kraus

  Thinking, People, Devil

  "Die Fackel", no. 277/78 (March 31, 1909), translated in "Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry" by Thomas Szasz, (Ch. 8), 1970.

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• It is much more sensible to be an optimist instead of a pessimist, for if one is doomed to disappointment, why experience it in advance?

  Barbara Mertz

  Disappointment, Pessimist, Sensible

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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, Optimism, Despair

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

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• Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it. Fourth, they think somebody's going to like it. How optimistic is that?

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Writing, Optimistic

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• I've been a Cub all my life. I came up here when I was 20 years old and spent my whole career here in Chicago. I've always been an optimist; I believe you have to be in order to survive, to be honest with you - in health, with what I've been through. That's the way I am.

  Ron Santo

  Believe, Years, Careers

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• I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Optimistic

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• I do believe, in the long term, we will either get back to the principles that built America or we lose this country. And I'm an optimist.

  Ted Cruz

  Country, Believe, America

  Interview with Glenn Thrush, www.politico.com. July 18, 2016.

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• I'm an optimist at heart.

  Ted Cruz

  Heart

  Interview with Glenn Thrush, www.politico.com. July 18, 2016.

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• I'm a humanist and an optimist.

  Stewart D. Friedman

  Humanist

  "Stewart D. Friedman on 'Leading the Life You Want'". Interview with Bob Morris, bobmorris.biz. August 22, 2016.

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• I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. I am a realist, and the reality in Iraq is that it has been very hard and it continues to be hard.

  David Petraeus

  Reality, Iraq, Realist

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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