Pessimistic Quotes - Page 5

• I am quite pessimistic about ever achieving interstellar travel.

  Theodore von Karman

  Future, Achieve, Predictions

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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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• Maybe I'm overly pessimistic, but most of Africa is a continent without much hope for its people... What [Africa] needs, the West cannot give. ...what Africans need is personal liberty...[and] guarantees of private property rights and rule of law.

  Walter E. Williams

  Law, Rights, People

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• There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.

  David Rakoff

  Optimistic, Thinking, Optimism

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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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• It's fashionable in some circles to be pessimistic about America, about conservative solutions, about the Republican Party. I utterly reject that pessimism.

  Mitt Romney

  Party, Circles, America

  "CN Newsroom", www.cnn.com. March 15, 2013.

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• Not to sound too pessimistic, but I just don't see me having the film career that I maybe hoped for after 'The Birdcage.' I think people just didn't know what to do with me.

  Nathan Lane

  Thinking, Careers, People

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• Optimistic parents raise resilient children, but pessimistic parents raise broken offspring. Wherever there is darkness, show your children the light.

  Shmuley Boteach

  Children, Optimistic, Light

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

  Colin Farrell

  Optimistic

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• The first-rate mind is always curious, compassionate, original, and pessimistic.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Mind, Firsts, Pessimism

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.85, BookBaby

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• There is nothing like a start, and being born, however pessimistic one may become in later years, is undeniably a start.

  William McFee

  Years, May, Birth

  William McFee (1921). “Harbours of Memory”

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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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• 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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• American actors are all muscular, tanned, white teeth and they have this indestructible confidence. We British are all... Dare I say it? Pessimistic.

  Max Irons

  White, Teeth, Actors

  "Max Irons talks to Stephanie Rafanelli". www.harpersbazaar.com. April 6, 2011.

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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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• 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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• It must be a very dour and pessimistic astronomer indeed who seriously doubts that there must be countless numbers of intelligent civilizations scattered throughout the universe on other planets which are orbiting around other stars. An attitude which asserts that man is the only intelligent life form in the universe is intolerably arrogant today ... anyone who holds such an opinion today is, fortunately for those who like to see some progress in human conceptions, something of an intellectual freak equivalent to a believer in the Flat Earth Theory.

  Robert K. G. Temple

  Stars, Attitude, Men

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• And I am an optimistic person. I guess if you want to try to find something to be pessimistic about, you can find it, no matter how hard you look, you know?

  George W. Bush

  Optimistic, Trying, Looks

  George W. Bush's Remarks with President Karzai of Afghanistan in a Press Availability, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. June 15, 2004.

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