An Optimist Quotes & Sayings

I'm an optimist; I always hope that each new script is going to be a great story. — Viggo Mortensen

I smiled at his note. I'd never thought about myself as an optimist, but maybe I was. And maybe we all saw books differently based on our own hearts. — Mia Sheridan

The belief in miracles that all men cherish is born of immoderate indulgence in hope. There are people who go on hope sprees periodically and we all know the chronic hope drunkard that is held up before us as an exemplary optimist. Tip-takers are all they really are — Anonymous

An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience. — Don Marquis

A poet is a blind optimist.
The world is against him for
many reasons. But the
poet persists. He believes
that he is on the right track,
no matter what any of his
fellow men say. In his
eternal search for truth, the
poet is alone.
He tries to be timeless in a
society built on time. — Jack Kerouac

For an optimist life is beautiful, for a pessimist life is beautiful for the fool. — Debasish Mridha

Jeremy is an optimist. Maybe there's something good on TV. He settles down with the remote control on one of his father's pet couches: oversized and reupholstered in an orange-juice-colored corduroy that makes it appear as if the couch has just escaped from a maximum security prison for criminally insane furniture. This couch looks like it's hobby is devouring interior decorators. Jeremy's father is a horror writer, so no one should be surprised if some of the couches he reupholsters are hideous and eldritch. — Kelly Link

Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it. Fourth, they think somebody's going to like it. How optimistic is that? — Margaret Atwood

To be a member of the Labor Party is to be an optimist - optimistic about the future of Australia, optimistic about the ability of government to make a difference. — Kevin Rudd

I'm an eternal optimist. — Brian O'Driscoll

People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist really is.
An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that's out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.
An idealist focuses only on the best aspects of all things (sometimes in detriment to reality); an optimist strives to find an effective solution. A pessimist sees limited or no choices in dark times; an optimist makes choices.
When bobbing for apples, an idealist endlessly reaches for the best apple, a pessimist settles for the first one within reach, while an optimist drains the barrel, fishes out all the apples and makes pie.
Annoying? Yes. But, oh-so tasty! — Vera Nazarian

USE EMOTIONS AS INFORMATION. Horses use emotion as information to engage surprisingly agile responses to environmental stimuli and relationship challenges:

(a) Feel the emotion in its purest form
(b) Get the message behind the emotion
(c) Change something in response to the message
(d) Go back to grazing. In other words, let the emotion go, and either get back on task or relax, so you can enjoy life fully. Horses don't hang on to the story, endlessly ruminating over the details of uncomfortable situations

-- from an October 30, 2013 article on the Intelligent Optimist magazine — Linda Kohanov

A pessimist sees problems in opportunities whereas an optimist sees opportunities in problems. — Winston Churchill

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

He was like an extrovert who wanted to be an introvert, a very social guy who wanted to be a loner, a lucky person who would have preferred to be unlucky. An optimist posing as a pessimist, hoping people will take heed. It wasn't until the Iraq War and the end of his life that he became sincerely gloomy. — Kurt Vonnegut

How do you tell an optimist that he or she has lived a happy life by mistake? — Robert Breault

Which is, I'm an optimist that two people can be together to work out their conflicts. And that commitment, I think, might be what love is, because they both grow from their relationship. — Garry Shandling

A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist. — Beau Willimon

An optimist is a man who has never had much experience. — Don Marquis

An optimist is a driver who thinks that empty space at the curb won't have a hydrant beside it. — Jules Renard

I'm very much an optimist. I don't think I could do my work if I didn't believe there was some kind of hope for humanity. — Sandra Bernhard

What if once you get to know me, you don't like what you see?"

He took my hand and lifted it to his battered lips. "I already know you're the only woman in the world I'd allow myself to get my ass kicked for. I'm pretty sure it can only get better from here."

I almost smiled. "Ah, so you're an optimist."

"Not until I met you. — Lisa Kessler

I used to be an optimist, but now I know that nothing is going to turn out as I expect. — Sandra Bullock

Here's hoping all the days ahead, won't be as bitter as the one's behind you. Be an optimist instead, and somehow happiness will find you. — Ray Davies

A pessimist finds the darkness around the light but an optimist becomes the light in the darkness. — Debasish Mridha

I was born an optimist, as I always say. If I wake up in the morning with a pain in my chest, I'll always assume it's indigestion. It will probably be the end of me! But it's true - that's the kind of person I am. — Terry Wogan

An optimist is a man who plant two acorns and buy a hammock. — Jean De Lattre De Tassigny

So what am I? I guess I would call myself a sober optimist ... If you are not sober about the scale of the challenge, then you are not paying attention. But if you are not an optimist, you have no chance of generating the kind of mass movement needed to achieve the needed scale. — Thomas L. Friedman

I would not call myself an optimist, even though I would aspire to be. I am innately a skeptic. There's kind of an incessant dissatisfaction that I have, that I'm always trying to either expose or fight against or wrestle with. — Carrie Brownstein

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. Design is how you treat your customers. If you treat them well from an environmental, emotional, and aesthetic standpoint, you're probably doing good design. — Yves Behar

Elend shook his head. We can survive this. But, the only way that will happen is if our people don't give up. They need leaders who laugh, leaders who feel that this fight can be won. So, this is what I ask of you. I don't care if you're an optimist or a pessimist - I don't care if secretly, you think we'll all be dead before the month ends. On the outside, I want to see you smiling. Do it in defiance, if you have to. If the end does come, I want this group to meet that end smiling. As the Survivor taught us. — Brandon Sanderson

A pessimist is a person who is always right but doesn't get any enjoyment out of it, while an optimist, is one who imagines that the future is uncertain. It is a duty to be an optimist, because if you imagine that the future is uncertain, then you mu — Victor Cherbuliez

He knew too much to be an optimist, and not enough to relieve his pessimism. — Louis De Bernieres

You're such an optimist Kane
that's your problem. You only end up disappointed. — Paul Grist

In the face of so much pain, I remain an incurable optimist. I am fueled by the passion of the women I have been privileged to meet and work with, buoyed by their hope for peace, justice, and democracy. — Bella Abzug

A pessimist and an optimist, so much the worse; so much the better. — Jean De La Fontaine

Many an optimist has become rich by buying out a pessimist. — Robert G. Allen

I am an optimist because I don't see the point in being anything else. — Abraham Lincoln

She ordered white wine, and I ordered Schweppes tonic water without the booze. The drinks came, and I took a hit.
The first thing she said was, "I don't know how you can drink that stuff straight?"
"You mean without the liquor to kill the taste?"
"Yeah, it's so bitter."
"That's what I like about it. It's bitter like me. We match."
"You mean you're a grumpy old man?"
"Right. Can't help it. That's what happens when you get old."
"Well, I'm an optimist."
"I'm an optimist too, just a grumpy optimist. — Robert Hobkirk

I find, when you're an optimist, life has a funny way of looking after you. — Simon Sinek

I grew up in a small town in northeastern Indiana. I had an all-American childhood. And I grew up as an optimist. — Mary Meeker

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight ... the truly wise person is colorblind. — Albert Schweitzer

Wherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart. I know the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a light at the end of every tunnel. — Michael Morpurgo

I love people. When you're engaged with society and trying to make it a better society, you're an optimist. — George Takei

Being an optimist after you've got everything you want doesn't count. — Kin Hubbard

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make
it through one door, I'll go through another door
or I'll
make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark
the present. — Joan Rivers

." the Noween bellows with furious force: "Nooo! IT HAS TO BE DONE NOOOW!" The Noween hates children, because children refuse to accept the Noween's lie that time is linear. Children know that time is just an emotion, so "now" is a meaningless word to them, just as it was for Granny. George used to say that Granny wasn't a time-optimist, she was a time-atheist, and the only religion she believed in was Do-It-Later-Buddhism. The Noween brought the fears to the Land-of-Almost-Awake to catch children, because when a Noween gets hold of a child it engulfs the child's future, leaving the victim helpless where it is, facing an entire life of eating now and sleeping now and tidying up right away. Never again can the child postpone something boring till later and do something fun in the meantime. All that's left is now. A fate far worse than death, — Fredrik Backman

So far there has been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology for knowledge; on this point, at least, every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all tyrannized over by logic, and this is optimism in its essence. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I'm an optimist - I feel like an amazing part of life is that at any moment. — Aziz Ansari

Job is an optimist. He shakes the pillars of the world and strikes insanely at the heavens; he lashes the stars, but it is not to silence them; it is to make them speak. — G.K. Chesterton

I'm a technological optimist in that I do believe that technology will provide solutions that will allow the world in 2050 to support 9 billion people at an acceptable standard of living. But I'm a political pessimist in that I am concerned about whether the science will be appropriately applied. — Martin Rees

I am an optimist by nature and believe strongly that technology can be brought to bear to create alternatives, even in crisis situations. — Vinton Cerf

One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. — Randy Pausch

We are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. But I'm an optimist. — Stephen Hawking

an optimist is someone who simply doesn't know enough. — Raymond Dean White

An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be. — Oscar Wilde

An optimist without realism is an idiot. — Ben Tolosa

I am fundamentally an optimist. — Nelson Mandela

This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous Russian novelist ... Vladimir specialized in gray studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide ...
Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the rate at which the inhabitants of that interesting country were murdering one another, the supply of Russian novelists must eventually give out. — P.G. Wodehouse

A pessimist? That's a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist. — Elbert Hubbard

From Jeff Greenfield: "I once asked Elie Wiesel "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" "An optimist," he said. "I have to be. — Elie Wiesel

It is most important in creative science not to give up. If you are an optimist you will be willing to "try" more than if you are a pessimist. — Stanislaw Ulam

For an optimist the glass is half full, for a pessimist it's half empty.And for an Engineer it is twice
bigger than necessary. — Sudeep Nagarkar

With so many generous friends and family members from so many places for so many years, how could I not still be an optimist? Thomas — Thomas L. Friedman

Pessimist, are you?"
"I'm a doctor. That makes me an optimist with realistic notions. — Charles Martin

I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right. — Albert Einstein

A pessimist looks at his glass and says it is half empty; an optimist looks at it and says it is half full. — Josiah Stamp

A man had to close his eyes to remain an optimist, and there was no honor in that. — Robert Ferrigno

I am, by nature, an optimist. — Martin Heinrich

Most people consider me an optimist because I laughingly state that I would take my last two dollars and buy a money belt. — Zig Ziglar

If I didn't work in television or film, if I didn't have the right look, I never took it personally. Because there was always the theatre. I'm not a nihilist, I'm an optimist. And that has served me well in this profession. — Kim Cattrall

People say 'Bill, are you an optimist?' And I say, 'I hope so.' — Bill Bailey

Hypocrisy is a quality found in others. I am an optimist. I believe that saying the right thing will eventually cause people to do the right thing for me. — Bauvard

You can add up your blessings or add up your troubles. Either way, you'll find you have an abundance. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I was an optimist, a great champion of the human spirit. And I lost that for a time. I feel like I've regained a bit of that in the last few years but there was a period of my life in which I had a very low opinion of people in general. — Jude Law

Our notion of an optimist is a man who knowing that each year was worse than the preceding, thinks next year will be better. And a pessimist is a man who knows the next year can't be worse than the last one. — Franklin P. Adams

I don't know that I'd call myself an optimist. — Patrick DeWitt

I may be an optimist. — Rebecca De Mornay

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: ... But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays.
MRS CHEVELEY: Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: You prefer to be natural?
MRS CHEVELEY: Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
(Act I., lines 132-140) — Oscar Wilde

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

I've been a Cub all my life. I came up here when I was 20 years old and spent my whole career here in Chicago. I've always been an optimist; I believe you have to be in order to survive, to be honest with you - in health, with what I've been through. That's the way I am. — Ron Santo

I'm a realist all the way. I'm too cynical to be an optimist. But I've lived too much of a charmed life so far to ever be a pessimist. — Anthony Jeselnik

I'm sort of a pessimist about tomorrow and an optimist about the day after tomorrow. — Eric Sevareid

Whoever said the truth hurts was being an optimist. The truth is an excruciatingly painful son of a bitch. — Colleen Hoover

A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him. — Helen Keller

I'm an optimist about humanity in general, I suppose. — Tim Berners-Lee

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer - he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity. — Bernard Malamud

An optimist is a man who plants two acorns and buys a hammock. — Jean De Lattre De Tassigny

I am an optimist about America. — Anthony Lewis

An optimist is somebody who thinks our various political and social systems, schools and churches, support groups and Boy Scout troops, jury trials and congressional committees, are on the up-and-up. That they are intended for the benefit of the members. The reality is that they are designed to keep everyone in line. — Jack McDevitt

Optimism is not inherently a superior way of viewing the world. Certainly doctors will say it might be better for one's physical health to be an optimist. But, morally speaking it may not be appropriate in certain circumstances. — Todd Solondz

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

An optimist and a gentleman, I like that in my men. — Karen Azinger

I was tired of working in the lumber industry," Phil said. "I was sure I could find a better job, and look at me now - cook on a dilapidated submarine. Life keeps on getting better and better." "You always were an optimist," Klaus said. — Lemony Snicket

I have always had a passion for the beautiful. If the man in me is often a pessimist, the artist, on the contrary, is pre-eminently an optimist. — Jules Breton

The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come — Peter Ustinov

Well, I'm an optimist. — Harry Connick Jr.

I would say I'm an optimist by nature. — Steve Tisch

Leo," Amelia asked suspiciously, "what are you planning to do to her?" "Why do you always insist on asking questions when you know you won't like the answers?" "Because, being an optimist," she said tartly, "I always hope I'm wrong."
- Amelia & Leo — Lisa Kleypas

An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist is a man who looks after your feet. — G.K. Chesterton