A Quote by Bill Ayers

I'm an optimist in my heart - I'm a hopeless pollyanna just like my mother - but a pessimist in my head. I think that's the dialectic we all need to be in.

Bill Ayers

Quote Topics

Dialectic Head Heart Hopeless Just Like Mother My Heart Need Optimist Pessimist Pollyanna Think

Quote Author

Bill Ayers
American - Activist
Born: December 26, 1944

Sometimes it's not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you and know, absolutely know, that the sound in the dark is a monster, and it really is as bad as you think. Did that sound hopeless? It didn't feel hopeless. It felt reassuring. It felt - real.

Laurell K. Hamilton

But I am an optimist about Britain; and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it's beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome.

Tony Blair

I think a pessimist is just an optimist who has had their heart repeatedly broken.

Jon Richardson

Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.

Robert A. Heinlein

Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!

Oscar Wilde

The difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh.

Tom Bodett

I suffer from a genetic flaw, which is that my mother was a hopeless Pollyanna.

Bill Ayers

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you're just one more deluded Pollyanna.

Abraham Maslow

Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? A pessimist says ‘Oh dear, things can’t possibly get any worse.’ And an optimist says, ‘Don’t be so sad. Things can always get worse.

Steven Galloway

The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true."

James Branch Cabell

Sometimes it's not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you.

Laurell K. Hamilton

People tell me, "You're such an optimist". Am I an optimist? An optimist says the glass is half full. A pessimist says the glass is half empty. A survivalist is practical. He says, "Call it what you want, but just fill the glass." I believe in filling the glass.

Louis Zamperini

Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better.

Martin Seligman

When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It's all a matter of perspective.