Pessimist Quotes - Page 4

• Pessimism is easy. We all can do it. We don't need to read books on how to be pessimists. We don't need guidance on how to think negatively. But we do need guidance on how to think positively. People that write books on how to do that are multimillionaires.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• You cannot have people in your organization who are pessimists. They take you to mediocrity.

  Carlos Slim

  Organization, People, Mediocrity

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• An optimist is a person who sees only the lights in the picture, whereas a pessimist sees only the shadows. An idealist, however, is one who sees the light and the shadows, but in addition sees something else: the possibility of changing the picture, of making the lights prevail over the shadows.

  Felix Adler

  Optimistic, Light, Optimism

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• Man is brilliant at solving problems; but solving them only makes him the victim of his own childishness and laziness. It is this recognition that has made almost every major philosopher in history a pessimist.

  Colin Wilson

  Men, Laziness, Recognition

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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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• Nothing of any importance has ever been accomplished by a pessimist.

  Jack Welch

  Morning, Accomplished, Importance

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• I've turned over a new leaf. On TV, Kenny Wallace said I was a pessimist after Charlotte, so I got mad. Now I am so excited about coming back that I just can't stand it. I wish we were starting tomorrow and I'm going to win! That's the new me.

  Mark Martin

  Winning, Mad, Wish

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• The pessimist waits for better times, and expects to keep on waiting; the optimist goes to work with the best that is at hand now, and proceeds to create better times.

  Christian D. Larson

  Hands, Waiting, Optimist

  Christian D. Larson (2012). “The Optimist Creed”, p.322, Penguin

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• If the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.

  Jane Rule

  Gay, People, Inspire

  Jane Rule (2013). “Outlander: Short Stories and Essays”, p.247, Open Road Media

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• A pessimist sees problems in opportunities whereas an optimist sees opportunities in problems.

  Winston Churchill

  Opportunity, Problem, Optimist

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• To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. Design is how you treat your customers. If you treat them well from an environmental, emotional, and aesthetic standpoint, you're probably doing good design.

  Yves Behar

  Emotional, Glasses, Design

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• I guess I'm a hopeful optimist, because to be a pessimist is to be suicidal.

  Peter Benchley

  Suicide, Suicidal, Hopeful

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• A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.

  Edmond Rostand

  Men, Telling The Truth, Optimists And Pessimists

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• The pessimist is the man who believes things couldn't possibly be worse, to which the optimist replies: 'Oh yes they could!'

  Vladimir Bukovsky

  Believe, Men, Statistics

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• I think I'm a realist. Which people who don't like me consider to be pessimism. It isn't pessimism at all. If I was a pessimist I wouldn't get up, I wouldn't shave, I wouldn't watch Batman at 7:30 a.m. Pessimists just don't do that sort of thing.

  Steven Morrissey

  Thinking, People, Watches

  "Stop me if you've heard this one before". "NME" Magazine, February 20, 1988.

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• I find daily life not always joyous, but always interesting. I have some sad days and nights, but none that are dull. As I advance deeper into the vale of years, I live with constantly increasing gusto and excitement. I am sure it all means something; in the last analysis, I am an optimist because I believe in God. Those who have no faith are quite naturally pessimists and I do not blame them.

  William Lyon Phelps

  Life, Believe, Mean

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• I am always an optimist. The pessimists are the liars who refuse to admit what is happening. And I'll give you three things we could do this instant to help Mexico: legalize drugs, renegotiate NAFTA so that it pays a living wage, protects unions and protects the environment and stop Plan Merida which gives $500 million a year to the Mexican army, the largest single criminal organization in Mexico.

  Charles Bowden

  Liars, Army, Years

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Humorists are always pessimists. They're reactionaries: because they see that every golden cloud has a black lining.

  Christina Stead

  Clouds, Black, Golden

  Christina Stead (2012). “I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist”, p.28, Open Road Media

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• I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.

  A. E. Housman

  Philosophy, Historical, Personal History

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• I will be the first to admit that I am a pessimist by nature. It is, after all, the wisest way to be. We pessimists have everything to gain, whereas optimists have a fifty-fifty chance of being disappointed.

  Tamar Myers

  Optimistic, Fifty, Way

  Tamar Myers (2008). “As the World Churns”, p.82, NYLA

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• I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.

  Norman Mailer

  People, Childhood, Grace

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• Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am.

  Charlie Munger

  Cheerful

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• Every pessimist who ever lived has been buried in an unmarked grave. Tomorrow has always been better than today, and it always will be.

  Will Harvey

  Today, Tomorrow, Graves

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• Let's say there was no terrorism whatsoever and we were all very nice to one another and we were all kind, we still would be faced with an extremely cruel and hostile universe and existence and so I'm a great pessimist and I feel that it's impossible really to be happy, and that the best you can hope for is to be distracted.

  Woody Allen

  Nice, Would Be, Impossible

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2001.

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• Evolution throws a wonderful light on all the struggles, eccentricities, tortuous developments of the human conscience in the past. It is the only theory of morals that does. And evolution throws just as much light on the ethical and social struggle today; and it is the only theory that does. What a strange age ours is from the religious point of view! What a hopeless age from the philosopher's point of view! Yet it is a very good age, the best that ever was. No evolutionist is a pessimist.

  Joseph McCabe

  Religious, Struggle, Past

  "The Human Origin of Morals". Book by Joseph McCabe, 1926.

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