Optimist Pessimist Quotes & Sayings

The pessimist looks down and hits his head. The optimist looks up and loses his footing. The realist looks forward and adjusts his path accordingly. — Robert Kirkman

The optimist believes that bad events have specific causes, while good events will enhance everything he does; the pessimist believes that bad events have universal causes and that good events are caused by specific factors. When — Martin E.P. Seligman

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

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

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

Dear optimist, pessimist, and realist
while you guys were busy arguing about the glass of wine, I drank it! Sincerely, the opportunist! — Lori Greiner

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

Vision involves optimism and hope. The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty. — J. Oswald Sanders

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

To the optimist all doors have handles and hinges; to the pessimist, all doors have locks and latches. — William Arthur Ward

The optimist sees the doughnut but the pessimist see 452 calories and a shed load of sugar ... — James Minter

The optimist and the pessimist both die in the end, but each lives is life in a completely different way. — Paulo Coelho

I may be the optimist and you may be the Pessimist

but you can never put a puzzle together

with the two of the same pieces. — Austin V. Songer

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. — William Arthur Ward

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

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

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

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live. Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom. Only a person who risks is free. The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; and the realist adjusts the sails — William Arthur Ward

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

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

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

The optimist pleasantly ponders how high his kite will fly; the pessimist woefully wonders how soon his kite will fall. — William Arthur Ward

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

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

Sometimes it's not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you and know, absolutely know, that the sound in the dark is a monster, and it really is as bad as you think.
Did that sound hopeless? It didn't feel hopeless. It felt reassuring. It felt - real. — Laurell K. Hamilton

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

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it. — J. Robert Oppenheimer

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

In the long run, the pessimist may be proven right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip. — Daniel Reardon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zarathustra, the first to recognize that the optimist is just as degenerate as the pessimist though perhaps more detrimental says: "Good men never speak the truth. The Good preach of false shores and false security. You were born and bred in the lies of the good. Through the good everything has become false and twisted down to the very roots". Fortunately the world is not built solely to serve good natured herd animals their little happiness ; to desire everybody to become a "good man", "a herd animal", blue-eyed, benevolent, "a beautiful soul" - or, as Herbert Spencer wished - altruistic, would mean robbing existence of its great character, to castrate mankind and reduce humanity to a sort of wretched Chinadom. And this some have tried to do! It is precisely this that men have called morality. — Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole! — Oscar Wilde

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

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

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

The optimist is a pessimist with a plan — Bangambiki Habyarimana

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole. — Oscar Wilde

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

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

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

The pessimist may call the optimist a fool; but who is more foolish, the happy individual who expects more happiness or the one who fills his life with bitterness and has only more despair to look forward to? — Wayne Gerard Trotman

Although the optimist may be a little giddy when foreseeing the future, telling himself that it will all work out in the end when that isn't always the case, his attitude is more fruitful since, in the hope of undertaking a hundred projects, followed up by diligent action, the optimist will end up completing fifty. Conversely, in limiting himself to undertake a mere ten, the pessimist might complete five at best and often fewer, since he'll devote little energy to a task he feels to be doomed from the start. — Matthieu Ricard

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

This is the picture of the spirit world. It is the world of the optimist. The pessimist has no share in its great glory, because he refuses to accept the possibility which is the nature of life. Thus he denies to himself all he desires, and even the possibility of achieving his desires. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

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

Pessimist: The optimist who didn't arrive. — Mark Twain

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'm supposed to figure out if the glass is half full or half empty," I told her.
Without a moment's hesitation, in a split second, my grandmother shrugged and said: "It depends on if you're drinking or pouring. — Bill Cosby

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

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