A Quote by Thomas Friedman

Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.

Thomas Friedman

Quote Topics

Change Done Great Great Change History Positive Positive Change Wrong

Quote Author

Thomas Friedman
American - Journalist
Born: July 20, 1953

Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.

Thomas Friedman

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

Emile M. Cioran

I don't know if the optimists or the pessimists are right. But, the optimists are going to get something done.

Craig Venter

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

Pessimists are toxic. I love optimists - and by that, I don't mean people who are unable to see challenges. Optimists are solution-oriented.

Ivanka Trump

Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all.

Stephen King

In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when they are wrong they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eye-open optimism pays.

David Landes

. . . if there is a way for the world to be transformed for the better, it can only be done by pessimism; optimists will never change the world for the better.

Jose Saramago

There are people who are wired to be skeptics and there are people who are wired to be optimists. And I can tell you, at least from the last 20 years, if you bet on the side of the optimists, generally you’re right.

Marc Andreessen

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists.

Fred Brooks

Americans are optimists. They hope they'll be wealthy someday - and they're positive they can get one more brushful of paint out of an empty can.

Bernard Williams

As a bull market turns into a bear market, the new pros turn into optimists, hoping and praying the bear market will become a bull and save them. But as the market remains bearish, the optimists become pessimists, quit the profession, and return to their day jobs. This is when the real professional investors re-enter the market.

Robert Kiyosaki

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.

Walter Cronkite

But America was built by optimists. Optimists like my friend Amanda, who recently started a small business. When she went to buy her website address-her first and last name-she found that someone already owned it, but wasn't using it. So my friend emailed the owner of the site to ask if she could buy it. The owner wrote back.

Eva Longoria

Pessimists see problems as stemming from stable and universal causes, thus making them less susceptible to corrective action. Optimists, in contrast, view problems as temporary and resulting from specific factors that will either change or be changed.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

You see, Buddhists are optimists. We never saw sunsets in Atlantis like we do now. We didn't have those great chemicals in the air.