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

I'm a blind optimist when going into things. — Eric Fellner

You can discern the pessimist from the optimist by just looking at how people react to snow. — Iveta Cherneva

The pessimist is the man who believes things couldn't possibly be worse, to which the optimist replies: 'Oh yes they could!' — Vladimir Bukovsky

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

I'm a big believer that there's a reason for everything. I'm a hopeless optimist. — Rachael Yamagata

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

The deep breathe you just took to show that your problems are bigger than you, is the final breathe someone had taken right now in his life! As long as your breathe is not the final one, you still have a hope! — Israelmore Ayivor

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

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

The pessimist says, 'It can't get any worse!' And the optimist replies, 'Oh yes it can! — Madeleine Urban

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

One more cockeyed optimist thrown under the reality bus. — Deborah Coonts

The pessimist says opportunities are NO WHERE. The optimist says opportunities are NOW HERE. Both see the same words, but read it differently. That's Life!-RVM — R.v.m.

The pessimist focuses on the storm;
the optimist looks forward to the rainbow. — Matshona Dhliwayo

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

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

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

That optimist of yours is always ready to turn hell's backyard into a play-ground. — Mark Twain

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

I've gone through terrible periods of depression. But, at the core of my being, there's a strange, out-of-place optimist. Despite what I'm feeling, I'm always able to get up and do my job. Which means the world to me. — Jenny Lewis

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

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

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

I feel like I'm a relentless, pragmatic, determined optimist. — Jacqueline Novogratz

I say looking on the bright side of life never killed anybody. — Jenny Han

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

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

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

Faith is, believing there is still a star out there to wish on, just for you, tucked away behind dark clouds. — Anthony Liccione

The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. — G.K. Chesterton

Over the past ten years, I've processed a lot. I'm still processing. And there is more to be done. But I'm very proud of the person I am today. I'm proud to be gay. I'm proud to be a reckless optimist. I'm proud to keep learning and sharing what I've learned. I'm proud to be a work in progress. — Hannah Hart

It's still possible to be a cockeyed optimist these days - you just have to be a little more cockeyed. — Robert Breault

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

We are optimists, until we are not. — Charles Darwin

The pessimist waits for better times, and expects to keep on waiting; the optimist goes to work with the best that is at hand now, and proceeds to create better times. — Christian D. Larson

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

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

Pessimists try to convince you the world sucks, optimists already know it does and smile anyway. — Jonathan Harnisch

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

Optimist: someone who isn't sure whether life is a tragedy or a comedy but is tickled silly just to be in the play. — Robert Breault

Lately, a study has suggested that depressed people have a more accurate view of reality, though this accuracy is not worth a bean because it is depressing, and depressed people live shorter lives. Optimists and believers are happier and healthier in their unreal worlds. — Anna Funder

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

Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world. — Helen Keller

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

Well, you know, I'm the forever optimist. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

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 tend to be a great optimist when it comes to the United States and the American way of life, I think precisely because I wasn't born into it. — Paullina Simons

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

Some people are optimists. Some people are pessimists. I'm just a realist who believes that some things are worth fighting for. — C. JoyBell C.

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

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

PESSIMISM- philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. — Ambrose Bierce

The optimist is a pessimist with a plan — Bangambiki Habyarimana

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

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

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

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

All good leaders are optimists. They always see opportunity where others see hardship — Jocelyn Murray

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

When hearing a door creak, the optimist thinks it's opening and the pessimist thinks it's closing. — Matthieu Ricard

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

You're just Little Miss Optimist, aren't you? Do you come with accessories, like a glass half full and lemons to make into lemonade, too? — Rachel Caine

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

I heard about this man who fell into a pit, and while he was down there several people came by and offered their opinions. The Pharisee said, "You deserve to be in the pit." The Catholic said, "You need to suffer while you're in the pit." The Baptist said, "If you'd been saved, you wouldn't have fallen into the pit." The charismatic said, "Just confess I'm not in the pit." The mathematician said, "Let me calculate how you fell into the pit." The IRS agent said, "Have you paid taxes on that pit?" The optimist said, "Things could be worse." The pessimist said, "Things will get worse. — Joel Osteen

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