An Optimist Pessimist Quotes & Sayings

I'm not a pessimist at all, but I'm not an optimist, either. — Nate Lowman

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

A pessimist says all women are loose. An optimist does not, but he has hopes. — Julian Tuwim

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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

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

There's an old line that goes like this: An optimist is usually happy. And a pessimist is usually right. Maybe so. But which would you rather be, anyway? — Joe Posnanski

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

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. — Harvey MacKay

I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I am a dyed-in-the-woo l possibilist! By this, I mean with an eco-mind, we see that everything's connected and change is the only constant. — Frances Moore Lappe

Unsatisfied desire is the characteristic feature of human life. That is the common fact out of which both pessimism and optimism are constructed. Dwell on the impossibility of ever getting a state of complete and permanent satisfaction with what you have, and you become a pessimist. Dwell on the opportunity for endless growth and conquest which this same fact makes possible, and you become an optimist. — William DeWitt Hyde

Many an optimist has become rich simply by buying out a pessimist. — Laurence J. Peter

A pessimist is just an optimist with experience. — Eyedea

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

Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information. — Idries Shah

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 pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. — Winston S. Churchill

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

I asked her, "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" She looked at her watch and said, "I'm optimistic." "Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each others as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon." "Why do beautiful songs make you sad?" "Because they aren't true." "Never?" "Nothing is beautiful and true." She smiled, but in a way that wasn't just happy, and said, "You sound just like Dad. — Jonathan Safran Foer

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

An optimist is the man who looks after your eyes, and the pessimist the person who looks after your feet. — Ada Leverson

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 sees the darkness around the light, but an optimist looks for the light in the darkness. — Debasish Mridha

An optimist is merely an ex-pessimist with his pockets full of money, his digestion in good condition, and his wife in the country. — Helen Rowland

The difference was not that one was a pessimist and the other an optimist, it was that one's pessimism had led to an ethos of fear, and the other's pessimism had led to a noisy, fractious disdain for Everything-That-Was. One shrank, the other flailed. One toed the line, the other crossed it out. Much of the time they were at loggerheads, and because Willy found it so easy to shock his mother, he rarely wasted an opportunity to provoke an argument. If only she'd the wit to back off a little, he probably wouldn't have been so insistent about making his points. Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world. — Paul Auster

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old one leaves. — Bill Vaughan

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. Hope is the feeling that life and work have a meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you. Life without hope is an empty, boring, and useless life. I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big as life itself. — Vaclav Havel

A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them. — Leonard Louis Levinson

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 neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist. — Max Lerner

An optimist sees a failure as an opportunity to excel, but a pessimist sees a failure as an opportunity to quit. — Debasish Mridha

An optimist is presented with a problem and sees an opportunity. A pessimist is presented with an opportunity and sees a problem. — Harry S. Truman

There's no difference between a pessimist who says, "Oh, it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything," and an optimist who says, "Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyway." Either way, nothing happens. - YVON CHOUINARD,7 founder of Patagonia — Timothy Ferriss

I walked out of that office with my survey still in the box, unsure of what I was. An optimist? A pessimist? Neither. A fool. I — Jay Asher

I think I probably hoped for it a little bit, but I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist ... or maybe even a pessimist. — Clay Aiken

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. As a worst-case example, a pessimist might refer to the hurt caused by some natural or human-made cataclysm. To adduce a hedonic counterpart to the horrors that attach to such cataclysms would require a degree of ingenuity from an optimist, but it could be done. And the reason it could be done, the reason for the eternal stalemate between optimists and pessimists, is that no possible formula can be established to measure proportions and types of hurt and happiness in the world. If such a formula could be established, then either pessimists or optimists would have to give in to their adversaries. — Thomas Ligotti

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little. — Mark Twain

If the business world is divided between optimists and pessimists (Schumpeter, January 31st) then perhaps what is needed are more scientists. There is an old joke that goes: to an optimist the glass is half full; to a pessimist it is half empty. To an engineer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. — Anonymous

I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. — Lesslie Newbigin

The believer is neither a pessimist nor an optimist. To be either is illusory. The believer sees reality not in a certain light but as it is, and believes only in God and God's power towards all and over all that is seen. (in No Rusty Swords) — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You know, you have to be an optimist, a pessimist, sarcastic and pleasant all at the same time to be a photographer. — Rondal Partridge

An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to. — Laurence J. Peter

A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is one who hopes they are. — Chauncey Depew

The short-lived crash and burn of an eternal optimist is far more deeply felt than the day-to-day misery of an eternal pessimist. — Gregor Collins

I'm a pessimist about probabilities; I'm an optimist about possibilities. — Lewis Mumford

It is much more sensible to be an optimist instead of a pessimist, for if one is doomed to disappointment, why experience it in advance? — Elizabeth Peters

The the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hope are optimistic. — Albert Schweitzer

To a pessimist, losing bobby pins is as hopeless as losing hair.
To an optimist, losing hair gives hope to get the lost bobby pins back. — Munia Khan

A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist. — Elbert Hubbard

Obviously, you can't control everything, but you are obliged to take care of the few things you can. I'm an optimist, basically, who acts like a pessimist. On principle. Just in case. — Russell Banks

An optimist looks at a seed and sees a tree;
a pessimist looks at a tree and sees a forest fire. — Matshona Dhliwayo

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties. — Harry Truman

No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself. — G.K. Chesterton

Realism is for pessimists. An optimist creates his own reality. — David Harley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant. — Rex Stout

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

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

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

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

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 a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will. — Antonio Gramsci

An optimist is someone who thinks that on planet number five the history of mankind will be less bloody. A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise. — Milan Kundera

Unsure of what I was. An optimist? A pessimist?
Neither. A fool. — Jay Asher

I personally don't think of myself as either an optimist or a pessimist. — Nick Bostrom

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

Winston Churchill once quipped, "The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." He went on to say, "I am an optimist. It does not seem much use being anything else. — William Ury

When I was a boy there were two curious men running about who were called the optimist and the pessimist. I constantly used the words myself, but I cheerfully confess that I never had any very special idea of what they meant. The only thing which might be considered evident was that they could not mean what they said; for the ordinary verbal explanation was that the optimist thought this world as good as it could be, while the pessimist thought it as bad as it could be. Both these statements being obviously raving nonsense, one had to cast about for other explanations. An optimist could not mean a man who thought everything right and nothing wrong. For that is meaningless; it is like calling everything right and nothing left. Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself. — G.K. Chesterton

Know what an optimist is, Major? A pessimist without much experience. — Nicholas Proffitt

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit. — Helen Keller

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 try not to be too optimistic or pessimistic. If you're a pessimist then that's depressing all the time; if you're an optimist and things don't work out then that's depressing, too. — Nicholas Hoult

When opportunity knocks a pessimist dials 911;
when opportunity knocks an optimist sets the table. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?"
"I can't remember. Which?"
"Do you know what those words mean?"
"Not really."
"An optimist is positive and hopeful. A pessimist is negative and cynical."
"I'm an optimist."
"Well, that's good, because there's no irrefutable evidence. There's nothing that could convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to. — Jonathan Safran Foer

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

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

On one hand, I'm an optimistic pessimist. On the other, I'm a pessimistic optimist. But while there's life, there's still hope, and I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I didn't think there was still hope. — Helen Caldicott

In the Soviet Union we have a saying, a pessimist is someone who believes things can't get any worse. An optimist thinks maybe they can. — Abel Aganbegyan

To be pessimist is to amputate one's own legs and arms! Only an optimist man has the ability to move! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

An optimist sees the miracles and beauty of life and a pessimist sees the sufferings and wonders, where is the life? — Debasish Mridha

An optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist sees the whole. — Navjot Singh Sidhu

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out? — Rene Descartes