A Quote by Jan Smuts

When I look at history, I am a pessimist...but when I look at prehistory, I am an optimist.

Jan Smuts

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Jan Smuts
South African - Statesman
May 24, 1870 - September 11, 1950

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 am glad I am an optimist. The pessimist is half-licked before he starts.

Thomas Buckner

I am not a pessimist, but I am not an optimist about the future of American democracy.

David Souter

I am glad I am an optimist. The pessimist is half-licked before he starts. The optimist has won half the battle, the most important half that applies to himself, when he begins his approach to a subject with the proper mental attitude. The optimist may not understand, or if he understands he may not agree with, prevailing ideas; but he believes, yes, knows, that in the long run and in due course there will prevail whatever is right and best.

Thomas Buckner

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

I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool an optimist must know how sad a place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.

Peter Ustinov

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 am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. I am a realist, and the reality in Iraq is that it has been very hard and it continues to be hard.

David Petraeus

I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.

William Golding

I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.

Max Lerner

I am not a pessimist. Just a well informed optimist.

Antonio Gala

I sometimes say I am a 'happiness optimist' but a 'revenue pessimist.'

Tyler Cowen

I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart.

Vaclav Havel

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

A Quote by Jan Smuts

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