Optimism Quotes - Page 21

• 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”

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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”

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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”

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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”

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• Circumstances break men's bones; it has never been shown that they break men's optimism.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Bones, Break

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• I think losing a child is unimaginable. It's every person's worst nightmare. It's unimaginably difficult. It shakes your faith in the world. It tests your optimism.

  Natalie Portman

  Children, Thinking, Worst Nightmares

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• I'm a pessimist, but I have many painstakingly applied coats of optimism.

  George Meyer

  Coats, Pessimist

  Interview with Eric Spitznagel, www.ericspitznagel.com. September 1, 2004.

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• I think we all like to see ourselves as good dads, but there's also that fear, 'Oh, I don't want to be like my father,' or, 'I hope my kid doesn't turn out like me.' You know, I have those feelings too. So the key is optimism.

  Ben Affleck

  Dad, Father, Kids

  "Ben Affleck: I quit drinking to be good husband". Mirror interview, www.mirror.co.uk. May 30, 2008.

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• Everything is a meaningless struggle against nothing and when people say that the world has become a better place that is a false development-optimism. Nothing exists which ever becomes better. Everything stays the same. Somehow, there is nothing. That is so sad. Nothing to come to. Everything is an illusion. A very sweet illusion.

  Odd Nerdrum

  Sweet, Struggle, People

  Source: sturm-lie.be

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• The crazy thing is that practical solutions exist. We don't need to perpetuate these problems. I think our hardest job is to convey a sense of optimism, show how things can get better, and get people to invest in solutions.

  Mark Powell

  Jobs, Crazy, Thinking

  Source: www.treehugger.com

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• Optimism is a tonic. Pessimism is poison. Admittedly, every businessman must be realistic. He must gather facts, analyze them candidly and strive to draw logical conclusions, whether favorable or unfavorable. He must not engage in self-delusion. He must not view everything through rose-colored glasses. Granting this, the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation's destiny, by men willing to adventure to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.

  B. C. Forbes

  Adventure, Destiny, Men

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• When you're working on development issues, optimism is not always based on rational analysis, often it is a moral choice.

  Jim Yong Kim

  Issues, Choices, Analysis

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• Hope is optimism plus a belief there is a path out of your adversity.

  Santiago "Jimmy" Mellado

  Leadership, Christian, Adversity

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