Top 148 Optimists And Pessimists Quotes & Sayings

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

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

And our pessimists think this has taken too long. Our pessimists believe that too many Americans have died. Our pessimists believe that we have lost the war.

Pessimists fear becoming the dupes of Hope. Optimists enjoy Hope's company, and consider being duped no great matter.

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

Loneliness has little to do with what we do or where we do it, whether we're married or unmarried, optimists or pessimists, heterosexual or homosexual. Loneliness has to do with the sudden clefts we experience in every human relation, the gaps that open up with such stomach-turning unexpectedness. In a brief moment, I and my brother or sister have moved away into different worlds, and there is no language we can share.... It is in the middle of intimacy that the reality of loneliness most dramatically appears.

Optimists and pessimists die the exact same death, but they live very different lives!

We are optimists, until we are not.

Optimists are usually inexperienced.

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.

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

Optimism is a tonic. Pessimism is poison. Admittedly, every businessman must be realistic. He must gather facts, analyze them candidly and strive to draw logical conclusions, whether favorable or unfavorable. He must not engage in self-delusion. He must not view everything through rose-colored glasses. Granting this, the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation's destiny, by men willing to adventure to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.

Americans like optimists and shun 'doomsayers.'

People don't like to follow pessimists.

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?

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.

Fighters have to be optimists.

Pessimists are usually kind. The gay, bubbling over, have to time for the pitiful.

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.

For optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better. For pessimists, there is no amount of happiness—should such a thing as happiness even obtain for human beings except as a misconception—that can compensate us for life’s hurt.

The pessimist borrows trouble; the optimists lend encouragement.

Optimists think that this is the best of all possible worlds; pessimists fear they are right.

The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

Optimists are right. So are pessimists. It's up to you to choose which you will be.

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

The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe that bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe that defeat is just a temporary setback or a challenge, that its causes are just confined to this one case.

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

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

I like pessimists. They’re always the ones who bring life jackets for the boat.

Optimists focus on the place they are going. Pessimists focus on the obstacles along the route. To become an optimist simply look ahead.

Christians should not be optimists; we know too much about sin. We should also not be pessimists, for we know the living God.

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.

we find that the optimists have an undeniable advantage over the pessimists. Many studies show that they do better on exams, in their chosen profession, and in their relationships, live longer and in better health, enjoy a better chance of surviving postoperative shock, and are less prone to depression and suicide.

...the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation's destiny, by men willing to adventure, to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.

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

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

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.

Let optimists rule the world.

Pessimists see a problem behind every opportunity. Optimists see an opportunity behind every problem.

You cannot have people in your organization who are pessimists. They take you to mediocrity.

Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present.

Realism is for pessimists. An optimist creates his own reality.

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?

The world belongs to optimists; the pessimists are only spectators.

Pessimists calculate the odds. Optimists believe they can overcome them.

The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

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.

Pessimists are born, true, but they also can be made.

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

We're all born pessimists. It takes effort to be optimistic.

Nuclear war is inevitable, says the pessimists; Nuclear war is impossible, says the optimists; Nuclear war is inevitable unless we make it impossible, says the realists.

Pessimists, we're told, look at a glass containing 50% air and 50% water and see it as half empty. Optimists, in contrast, see it as half full. Engineers, of course, understand the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

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.

Optimists are happier in life for a reason.

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

I thought all my life that optimists and pessimists pass away the same way, so why be a pessimist?

My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.

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.

Communists are the last optimists.