Quotes & Sayings About Being Too Optimistic

Perhaps I'm being too optimistic, but I think this country is finally ready for a black serial killer. — Anthony Jeselnik

Positive, optimistic sales people sell more than pessimistic sales people. — Martin Seligman

Welles and I differed, however, in our interpretation of the results of the Munich Conference, he being optimistic, I skeptical. In a radio address on October 3, several days after the conference, in which he described the steps taken by the United States Government just prior to Munich, he said that today, perhaps more than at any time during the past two decades, there was presented the opportunity for the establishment by the nations of the world of a new world order based upon justice and upon law. It seemed to me that the colors in the picture were much darker. — H.G.Wells

The error is this: it is proper for a creator to be optimistic, in the deepest, most basic sense, since the creator believes in a benevolent universe and functions on that premise. But it is an error to extend that optimism to other specific men. First, it's not necessary, the creator's life and the nature of the universe do not require it, his life does not depend on others. Second, man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it's up to him and only to him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be. The decision will affect only him; it is not (and cannot and should not be) the primary concern of any other human being. — Ayn Rand

I waited far too long, being optimistic rather than realistic. I also failed to do my homework — Gordon Clark

I have discovered there are only a handful of good ideas in the whole world. You already know them. You have heard them your entire life. Here are some of the main keys to being more successful:
Take personal responsibility.
Things change, so be flexible.
Work smart and work hard.
Serve others well.
Be nice to others.
Be optimistic.
Have goals; want something big for yourself.
Stay focused.
Keep learning.
Become excellent at what you do.
Trust your gut.
When in doubt, take action.
Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.
Enjoy all you've got.
Above all keep it simple. — Larry Winget

Why is it that the bad shit in our lives always seems to take up so much more mental space than the good stuff? I wrote. Is that part of being a person, or just part of being me?

I think about that question all the time.

Do you have an answer?

I don't think that questions like that have answers. An optimistic person would probably say that the bad things stick out because they're not as common as the good things.

Are you an optimistic person?

No. — Tommy Wallach

Stay positive, joyful, and optimistic in your activism, even in the face of adversity. Understand that most people continue to consume animal products because they are unaware of the hidden cost - animal cruelty - not because they are bad or apathetic. Offer information, support, and resources in a friendly and supportive manner, as few people have begun their journey toward a compassionate lifestyle by being shamed or ridiculed. Turn anger and frustration into motivation to be as effective as possible. — Nathan Runkle

I remain fundamentally optimistic about
Wall Street as a marketplace and as a vehicle for wealth creation. Its
future will rightly depend on several variables, chief among them
being human choices; whether they be rationally, emotionally, subjectively
or objectively made. Financial engineering taught us that if
it could be quantified, it could be qualified. We learned about how
to use leverage and have abused that knowledge for a myriad of
reasons. We became practitioners of the transaction-based model, but forgot that long before the abacus there was trust and integrity,
anchors of relationship-based models common with Middle East and
Asian markets. It goes back to a handshake, the first and enduring
example of mutual consensus. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

It's so weird, not knowing what your life is going to be. I'm being optimistic. And when 'Leverage' comes to an end, I have lots of ideas for other things. You can't really sit and wait for things to come to you. — Beth Riesgraf

Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going. — Jon Gordon

Don't wait for things to happen. Make them happen. — Roy Bennett

I think Albertans are progressive and forward-looking and are very optimistic, and I think they've always embraced change. Now with the economy being the way it is, I think we need to acknowledge people are a bit nervous too. — Rachel Notley

There was something obscene about a billionaire's being optimistic and aggressive and cunning. — Kurt Vonnegut

Being an England supporter is like being the over-optimistic parents of the fat kid on sports day. — John Bishop

Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. — Nelson Mandela

Being optimistic is the view looking for the best, it comes with the "never give up" attitude. — Pearl Zhu

The heart of man is vulnerable to negativity, but it could be easily fortified with positivity — Michael Bassey Johnson

Start each day with a positive thought and a grateful heart. — Roy Bennett

I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death. — Nelson Mandela

I know I come off as a little too optimistic, because I'm sure that as soon as things really get back to "normal," once our kids or grandkids grow up in a peaceful and comfortable world, they'll probably go right back to being as selfish and narrow-minded and generally shitty to one another as we were. But then again, can what we all went through really just go away? I once heard an African proverb, "One cannot cross a river without getting wet." I'd like to believe that. — Max Brooks

To live fully we would need to let go of our fear of dying. That fear can only be addressed by the love of living. We have a long history in this nation of believing that to be too celebratory is dangerous, that being optimistic is foolhardy, hence our difficulty in celebrating life, in teaching our children and ourselves how to love life. — Bell Hooks

You may find that you have been telling yourself that practicing optimism is a risk, as though, somehow, a positive attitude will invite disaster and so if you practice optimism it may increase your feelings of vulnerability. The trick is to increase your tolerance for vulnerable feelings, rather than avoid them altogether.
[ ... ]
Optimism does not mean continual happiness, glazed eyes and a fixed grin. When I talk about the desirability of optimism I do not mean that we should delude ourselves about reality. But practicing optimism does mean focusing more on the positive fall-out of an event than on the negative. ... I am not advocating the kind of optimism that means you blow all your savings on a horse running at a hundred to one; I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers. — Philippa Perry

When I was a student, I studied philosophy and religion. I talked about being patient. Some people say I was too hopeful, too optimistic, but you have to be optimistic just in keeping with the philosophy of non-violence. — John Lewis

It will be okay," Franklin said. And even though I felt he was far too optimistic, I also suspected that there was wisdom in his optimism; Franklin's scale for "okay" spanned thousands of years. He didn't worry about someone being unhappy for a few hours or days. He didn't really worry about unhappiness at all. I think he worried about animals and sunlight and possibly grain. He worried about the furtherance of human knowledge as a grand cooperative endeavor that made him coworkers with everyone from Proust to Einstein to the author of Inanna. — Rufi Thorpe

Too often, the notion of progress is used as a code word for perfection, the chain of being in a different guise. The term should be employed with caution. Some see an arrow of time in biology, as in physics, but in the opposite direction- a relentless tendency to improve, just as a universe has a built-in trend towards chaos and disorder. That is too optimistic. Some lineages get more complicated, some simpler, and much of life has to struggle to stay in the same place. If everyone is evolving, nobody can afford to stop, and there may be constant change with no overall advance at all. — Steve Jones

Love like this wasn't supposed to be missed, even for those of us that had never realized it was out there. Look at me being all optimistic and shit. — Jay Crownover

Cats are good at keeping clean [ ... ] Dogs are good at running forever without getting tired. And I think that pigs are good at being optimistic and not giving up even when things are really bad. So today we're going to do things the pig way, okay? — Chris Kurtz

I'm always sort of anticipating life being difficult, but on a basic level, that's sort of on the surface, on a basic level, I'm optimistic in the sense that I think it's all going to be alright in the end. — Emily Mortimer

I'm not pessimistic. It is the world that is terrible. How can we be optimistic in the face of a planet where people live so badly, nature is being destroyed and the dominant empire is money? — Jose Saramago

The very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. So many of the things in our world lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it's one of the affirming arts. A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act. — Tobias Wolff

Each of us have a winner within. Tap into your potential and gain unlimited success! The only one who can stop you is yourself. Think Positive! Be Optimistic! Don't be fooled into thinking it can't be done. Look around amazing things are accomplished everyday. New inventions, discoveries are happening all the time. If you can get one foot in the door, you can make it happen. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

Compared with members of other nations of Western civilization, the ordinary American is a rationalistic being, and there are close relations between his moralism and his rationalism. Even romanticism, transcendentalism, and mysticism tend to be, in the American culture, rational, pragmatic and optimistic. — Gunnar Myrdal

I am very optimistic about the long run prospects for democracy in China. Chinese society is being dramatically and rapidly transformed. And there's rising evidence that the new generation not only lacks faith in communism anymore, they think it's a joke. They're very cynical about their leadership and they want democratic change. — Larry Diamond

Despite the ills of our society, we largely live among compassionate, kind and optimistic people who are striving to do good. [ ... ] Learn how to be happy and keep this in mind: You can't be happy unless you stop being afraid. — Homer Hickam

What is it like being single? I like it! I like starting each day with a sense of possibility. And I'm optimistic, because everyday I get a little more desperate. And desperate situations yield the quickest results. — Michael Scott

The most optimistic thing that's happened is that as a society we're beginning to recognize that there are many voices. When I began, thirty years ago, the idea of one author or the artist as being a solitary creature was really the only idea that there was. — Wendy Ewald

In Mexico, I first encountered the attitude that was missing from the optimistic sense of living in the United States: a tragic sense of life. Such a sense doesn't force us into a somber cone of depression and futility; it urges the opposite. The tragic sense opens a human being to the exuberant joys of the present. To laughter, carnal ity, the comical varieties of love, to music and art, to the small human glories of the day. — Pete Hamill

Having a positive outlook means being optimistic even when you have continuous failures, and keep re-working on your plans. — Kandathil Sebastian

Being a pessimist is just such a gloomy way of looking at things, so I have to hope for the best - life wouldn't be worth living if we didn't have hope. And I also do think that human beings often do do wonderful, correct, brilliant things. So, on balance, I'd like to be optimistic about the future. — Bill Bryson

Being optimistic is the worst attitude in the world to have. — Tijan

The vicar, whose name is Reverend Waite, leads us in prayers that all begin with 'O Lord' and end with our somehow not being worthy-sinners who have always been sinners and will forever more be sinners until we die. It isn't the most optimistic outlook I've ever heard but we're encouraged to keep trying anyway. — Libba Bray

I didn't just foster the delusions. I lived them. Even after the world crashed, I clung to them. But after he died, I told myself no more. No more brave fronts or false hopes or pretending everything's okay when nothing is. I thought I was being tough by pretending, calling it being optimistic, brave, keeping my head up or whatever bullshit seemed to fit the moment. That's not tough. That's the very definition of soft. — Rick Yancey

Be a balanced optimist. Nobody is suggesting that you become an oblivious Pollyanna, pretending that nothing bad can or ever will happen. Doing so can lead to poor decisions and invites people to take advantage of you. Instead, be a rational optimist who takes the good with the bad, in hopes of the good ultimately outweighing the bad, and with the understanding that being pessimistic about everything accomplishes nothing. Prepare for the worst but hope for the best - the former makes you sensible, and the latter makes you an optimist. — Dale Carnegie

My baseline function is I'm usually really happy and optimistic. I think I really genuinely like being alive, and I've got a spring in my step - that's what I've been like all my life. — Jenny Slate

The night is darkest just before dawn. But keep your eyes open; if you avert your eyes from the dark, you'll be blind to the rays of a new day...So keep your eyes open, no matter how dark the night ahead may be. — Hideaki Sorachi