Pessimistic Quotes - Page 5

• Conservatism is pessimistic, with a negative tendency - which we mostly resist - towards despair. Liberals are optimists, with a negative tendency, rarely resisted, towards utopianism.

  John Derbyshire

  Despair, Negative, Tendencies

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• I'm very pessimistic about adaptations from one medium to another. I've got a very kind of primitive, Puritan view of it. I tend to think that if something was derived for one medium, then there's no real immediate reason to think that it's necessarily going to be as good or better if adapted into another one. There have been very good stage plays that have made some very good films. But there are not so many differences between the theater and the cinema as there are between the cinema and, say, reading a book or reading a comic.

  Alan Moore

  Real, Book, Reading

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• I realize more and more how instinctively pessimistic I am of all human kindness -- since I am always so bowled over by it -- and am never surprised by injustice, malice or personal attack.

  Dawn Powell

  Kindness, Injustice, Realizing

  Dawn Powell (1998). “The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965”, Zoland Books

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• It's not the tools that you have faith in - tools are just tools. They work, or they don't work. It's people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I'm still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.

  Steve Jobs

  Optimistic, Mean, Long

  Steve Jobs (0101). “Motivating Thoughts of Steve Jobs”, p.43, Prabhat Prakashan

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• My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

  Anne Rice

  God, Faith, Christian

  FaceBook post by Anne Rice from Jul 29, 2010

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• Human beings, thanks to culture and genetics, are inclined to be pessimistic, fearful, skeptical and believers in conspiracy theories. We also don't like change.

  Seth Godin

  Culture, Thanks, Conspiracy

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• If [Donald] Trump drags down a bunch of Senate Republicans, the post-election GOP assessment will be much more pessimistic.

  Mara Liasson

  Assessment, Election, Republican

  Source: www.npr.org

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• The military profession, especially in the long-established great powers, is deeply pessimistic about the likelihood that people and countries will behave well under stress. Professional officers are trained to think in terms of emergent threats, and this [climate change] is as big a threat as you are going to find. Never mind what the pundits are telling the public about the perils of climate change; what are the military strategists telling their governments? That will tell us a great deal about the probable shape of the future, although it may not tell us anything that we want to hear.

  Gwynne Dyer

  Country, Stress, Military

  "Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats". Book by Gwynne Dyer, 2008.

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• I'm not optimistic at all, nor am I pessimistic.

  Colin Farrell

  Optimistic

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• Left to my own devices, in the face of the climate change deniers, the madness and the greed-based decision-making, and propaganda that's been floating around, it's hard not to become pessimistic.

  Trent Reznor

  Greed, Decision, Climate

  Source: www.spin.com

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• I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.

  Bill McKibben

  Morning, Jobs, Optimistic

  Source: therumpus.net

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• If you give up on trying to change larger structures and just go off on what some would say is a personal indulgence or being a survivalist, it can be seen as incredibly negative or pessimistic. But the other way to think of it is this: through manifesting the way we live and acting as if it's normal, you're defending yourself against depression and dysfunction, but you're also providing a model that others can copy. And that is absolutely about bringing large-scale change.

  David Holmgren

  Giving Up, Thinking, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think in general technology always sort of makes some jobs less relevant, or perhaps, even obsolete, but I will say that the idea that sort of workers will find nothing else to do seems like it's way too pessimistic on the capabilities of everyone as human beings, right?

  Patrick Collison

  Technology, Thinking, Relevant

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• Data are pointing to very strong growth in the fourth quarter. The pessimistic viewpoint, which has seen its grip on reality slip to the last knuckle in the past few months, is now holding on by its fingernails.

  Brian Wesbury

  Strong, Past, Reality

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• When I was a very young student I loved and admired the work of Sam Beckett, who is famously pessimistic, and whose writing is an extraordinary examination of emptiness. I wanted to be like Beckett. I don't have the same attitude toward the world, I'm naturally optimistic, and so of course I could never be like Beckett. You can't force yourself to become like someone you admire.

  Michael Craig-Martin

  Attitude, Optimistic, Writing

  Source: www.artzip.org

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• I never like to use those terms [like pessimistic].

  Frances Moore Lappé

  Use, Term

  Source: www.yesmagazine.org

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• I'm slightly pessimistic about human nature, about how close it's possible to bond with those around you. Dying alone is a deep fear for most people. I'm not scared of death but I'm scared of dying scared. Maybe everything else in life comes from those two points: the separation anxiety of childhood and the ultimate fear of dying alone.

  Jonathan Trigell

  Dying Alone, Two, People

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• If we consistently act on the optimistic hypothesis, this hypothesis will tend to be realised; whilst by acting on the pessimistic hypothesis we can keep ourselves for ever in the pit of want.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Optimistic, Acting, Pits

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1972). “The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes”

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• Cynicism is something that is part of the media production of a certain type of subjectivity or consciousness that is passive and disempowered, cynical, fatalistic, pessimistic.

  Daniel Pinchbeck

  Media, Cynical, Subjectivity

  "Interview with Russell Brand, Daniel Pinchbeck, & Graham Hancock". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• How dare we be pessimistic? Maybe the future is better than it used to be.

  Peter Schwartz

  Used, Dare, Used To Be

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• [T]here's a good reason to stay pessimistic about deficits as far as the eye can see. It's called the 'news' media. Legislators who want to get re-elected will clearly want to avoid any spending decision that will create bad national publicity, and our news media, the manufacturers of bad national publicity, will send crying victims down the assembly line at the slightest thought of a social spending cut or freeze. Exhibit A is Sen. Jim Bunning.

  L. Brent Bozell, Jr.

  Eye, Cutting, Media

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• I try as hard as possible not to be pessimistic because I have never thought or believed that creating a Nigerian nation would be easy; I have always known that it was going to be a very tough job. But I never really thought that it would be this tough. And what's going on now, which is a subjection of this potentially great country to a clique of military adventurers and a political class that they have completely corrupted - this is really quite appalling. The suffering that they have unleashed on millions of people is quite intolerable.

  Chinua Achebe

  Country, Jobs, Military

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• I am quite pessimistic about ever achieving interstellar travel.

  Theodore von Karman

  Future, Achieve, Predictions

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• We are heading towards catastrophe. I think the world is going to pieces. I am very pessimistic. Why? Because the world hasn't been punished yet, and the only punishment that could be adequate is the nuclear destruction of the world.

  Elie Wiesel

  Thinking, Punishment, Nuclear

  Elie Wiesel, Robert Franciosi (2002). “Elie Wiesel: Conversations”, p.92, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• In being realistic we do not always have to be pessimistic. Christ never blinked his eyes at bad things. But he never became so obsessed with human evil that he lost faith in man.

  Ralph Washington Sockman

  Eye, Men, Worry

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