Pessimist Quotes - Page 5

• I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I am a dyed-in-the-woo l possibilist! By this, I mean with an eco-mind, we see that everything's connected and change is the only constant.

  Frances Moore Lappé

  Mean, Mind, Optimist

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• I have always had a passion for the beautiful. If the man in me is often a pessimist, the artist, on the contrary, is pre-eminently an optimist.

  Jules Breton

  Beautiful, Passion, Artist

  Jules Breton (1891). “The Life of an Artist: Art and Nature”

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• The bottom line on attitude is that a good one helps to increase your possibilities. Pessimists usually get what they expect. So do optimists.

  John C. Maxwell

  Attitude, Lines, Helping

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• Pessimists are just as illogical as optimists; insomuch as both envisage the aims of mankind as unified, and as having a direct relationship (either of frustration or of fulfilment) to the inevitable flow of terrestrial motivation and events. That is - both schools retain in a vestigial way the primitive concept of a conscious teleology - of a cosmos which gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitos, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Dog, Horse, Motivation

  Letter to James F. Morton (1929), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, (p. 483), 1996.

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• Men are always optimists when they look inwards, and pessimists when they look round them.

  Ouida

  Men, Optimism, Looks

  Ouida (1870). “Puck: His Vicissitudes, Adventures, Observations, Conclusions, Friendships, and Philosophies”, p.131

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• Our notion of an optimist is a man who knowing that each year was worse than the preceding, thinks next year will be better. And a pessimist is a man who knows the next year can't be worse than the last one.

  Franklin P. Adams

  Men, Thinking, Years

  Franklin P. Adams (''F.P.A.'') (1944). “Nods and Becks”

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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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• There's no difference between a pessimist who says, "Oh it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything." and an optimist who says, "Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyways. Either way, nothing happens."

  Yvon Chouinard

  Differences, Way, Hopeless

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• Pessimists are second rate people. They do not believe in life. ... All they want to do is drag you down and appease their own feelings of mediocrity and fear.

  Uell Stanley Andersen

  Believe, Optimistic, People

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• Pessimists are usually kind. The gay, bubbling over, have no time for the pitiful.

  Sean O Faolain

  Optimistic, Gay, Kind

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• Scratch a pessimist and you will often find a defender of privilege.

  William Beveridge

  Philosophy, Political, Scratches

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• A life-worshipper's philosophy is comprehensive. He is at one moment a positivist and at another a mystic: now haunted by the thought of death and now a Dionysian child of nature; now a pessimist and now, with a change of lover or liver or even the weather, an exuberant believer that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.

  Aldous Huxley

  Love, Children, Philosophy

  Aldous Huxley (1970). “Collected Works: Do what you will”

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• The positive outlook that optimists project does not come from ignoring or denying problems. Optimists simply assume that problems are temporary and can be solved, so optimists naturally want more information about problems because then they can get to work and do something. Pessimists are more likely to believe that there is nothing they can do anyway, so what's the point of even thinking about it?

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter

  Believe, Thinking, Optimism

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• Unsatisfied desire is the characteristic feature of human life. That is the common fact out of which both pessimism and optimism are constructed. Dwell on the impossibility of ever getting a state of complete and permanent satisfaction with what you have, and you become a pessimist. Dwell on the opportunity for endless growth and conquest which this same fact makes possible, and you become an optimist.

  William DeWitt Hyde

  Opportunity, Optimism, Growth

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• Which is more subversive-and corrosive-to believe in altruism or to see it simply as a cloak of self interest? Even if altruism did not exist, it would be necessary to believe in it. Pessimists in power are prone to despotism.

  Frank Prochaska

  Believe, Self, Volunteer

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• I am such a pessimist that every project has surpassed what I envisioned.

  Colin Mochrie

  Planning, Management, Projects

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• A Pessimist sees the glass as half empty; A Cub Fan wonders when it's gonna spill.

  Mike Royko

  Glasses, Fans, Half

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• A regret understood by no one: the regret to be a pessimist. It’s not easy to be on the wrong foot with life.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Regret, Feet, Easy

  "The Book of Delusions". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1936.

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• Pessimists beat their heads against walls, while optimists open doors.

  Wes Fesler

  Wall, Doors, Optimism

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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 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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• It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  School, Mind, Movement

  "The Victorian Age in Literature". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. II: The Great Victorian Novelists, p. 73, 1913.

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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 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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• 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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