Quotes & Sayings About Optimists

Being in touch with reality but focusing on the more positive angles is being a realistic optimist. Realistic optimists merely filter out unnecessary negative information. They learn to tune out negative words and occurrences and develop a habit of interpreting ambiguous situations in a more positive manner. — Iben Dissing Sandahl

A YEAR OR SO AGO I READ AN ARTICLE THAT SAID in the next five years we will become a conglomerate of the people we hang out with. The article went so far as to say relationships were a greater predictor of who we will become than exercise, diet, or media consumption. And if you think about it, the idea makes sense. As much as we are independent beings, contained in our own skin, the ideas and experiences we exchange with others grow into us like vines and reveal themselves in our mannerisms and language and outlook on life. If you want to make a sad person happy, start by planting them in a community of optimists. — Donald Miller

Optimists are usually inexperienced. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

There is a lot to be mad about in America today, but we must never forget that our cause is a joyous one. Conservatives should be optimists who believe in people. We champion hope and opportunity. Fighting for people, helping those who need us, and saving the country - this is, and should be, happy work. — Arthur C. Brooks

I like to think of my people as mute optimists - leave the elephant alone and, eventually, perhaps with the help of a couple mimosas, he will disappear from the room on his own accord. — Julie Buxbaum

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

Consider also the revolutionary utopians, who typically achieve only destruction and stagnation. Though they are blind optimists, what defines them as utopians is their pessimism that their supposed utopia, or their violent proposals for achieving and entrenching it, could ever be improved upon. Additionally, — David Deutsch

Communists are the last optimists. — Nadine Gordimer

Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists. — Franz Grillparzer

Pessimists see a problem behind every opportunity. Optimists see an opportunity behind every problem. — Denis Waitley

Part of me wanted to fling myself on the bed and hold him. Part of me wanted to fling myself on the bed and pummel him. — Susan Nielsen

We find that the optimists have an undeniable advantage over the pessimists. Many studies show that they do better on exams, in their chosen profession, and in their relationships, live longer and in better health, enjoy a better chance of surviving postoperative shock, and are less prone to depression and suicide. — Matthieu Ricard

There are different types of people in the world. There are people who accept what's in front of them unquestioningly. The live in the dark. In defeat. Ignoring what the future might bring or how they might help to make things happen. Then there are people like me. Optimists. They too live in the dark, in times like these, but dream of the light. I trust in the possibilities of betterness. I believe there is more to life than this. I have to. There's no other choices for me. — Jeyn Roberts

But America was built by optimists. Optimists like my friend Amanda, who recently started a small business. When she went to buy her website address-her first and last name-she found that someone already owned it, but wasn't using it. So my friend emailed the owner of the site to ask if she could buy it. The owner wrote back. — Eva Longoria

History has a cruel way of disappointing optimists. — Keith Thompson

Anguish. German soldiers--with their steel helmets and their death's-head emblem. Still, our first impression of the Germans were rather reassuring. The officers were billeted in private homes, even in Jewish homes. Their attitude toward their hosts was distant but polite. They never demanded the impossible, made no offensive remarks, and sometimes even smiled at the lady of the house. A German officer lodged in the Kahns' house across the street from us. We were told he was a charming man, calm, likable, and polite. Three days after he moved in, he brought Mrs. Kahn a box of chocolates. The optimists were jubilant: "Well? What did we tell you? You wouldn't believe us. There they are, your Germans. What do you say now? Where is their famous cruelty?

The Germans were already in our town, the Fascists were already in power, the verdict was already out--and the Jews of Sighet were still smiling. — Eli Wiesel

Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present. — Rudy Giuliani

YOU DON'T KNOW IF YOUR IDEA IS ANY GOOD the moment it's created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is
not as easy as the optimists say it is. There's a reason why feelings scare us - because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things. — Hugh MacLeod

Optimists are childish; they even believe they can find an ice cream store in the hell! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

There are some optimists who search eagerly for the skunk cabbage which in February sometimes pushes itself up through the ice, and who call it a sign of spring. I wish that I could feel that way about it, but I do not. The truth of the matter, to me, is simply that skunk cabbage blooms in the winter time. — Joseph Wood Krutch

Fine, large, meaningless, general terms like romance and business can always be related. They take the place of thinking, and are highly useful to optimists and lecturers. — Sinclair Lewis

Christians should not be optimists; we know too much about sin. We should also not be pessimists, for we know the living God. — Timothy Keller

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die? — Emil Cioran

The world belongs to optimists; the pessimists are only spectators. — Francois Guizot

If there is a way for the world to be transformed for the better, it can only be done by pessimism; optimists will never change the world for the better. — Jose Saramago

Isn't it strange how the most lethal cynics are often the most optimistic creative dreamers? — Robert Black

Optimists are those who go after Moby dick in a row boat with a bucket of tarter sauce. — Zig Ziglar

OPTIMISTS' CLUB CREED Promise yourself ... To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something of value in them. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. — Anthony Robbins

Pessimists calculate the odds. Optimists believe they can overcome them. — Ted Koppel

Pessimists are toxic. I love optimists - and by that, I don't mean people who are unable to see challenges. Optimists are solution-oriented. — Ivanka Trump

The positive outlook that optimists project does not come from ignoring or denying problems. Optimists simply assume that problems are temporary and can be solved, so optimists naturally want more information about problems because then they can get to work and do something. Pessimists are more likely to believe that there is nothing they can do anyway, so what's the point of even thinking about it? — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Nuclear war is inevitable, says the pessimists; Nuclear war is impossible, says the optimists; Nuclear war is inevitable unless we make it impossible, says the realists. — Sydney J. Harris

the following September I started at the grammar school. This was in a red-brick building of the kind beloved by Victorian optimists. In — Sebastian Faulks

You see, Buddhists are optimists. We never saw sunsets in Atlantis like we do now. We didn't have those great chemicals in the air. — Frederick Lenz

Sometimes it is difficult to explain why some men suddenly do the things they do. Sometimes, of course, it's because they know they'll do them sooner or later anyway, and so they may as well just do them now. And sometimes it's the pure opposite - because they realize they should have done them long ago. Ove has probably known all along what he has to do, but all people at root are time optimists. We always think there's enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like "if." As — Fredrik Backman

Optimists think badly, but live well. — Marty Rubin

Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all. — Stephen King

Optimists enrich the present, enhance the future,challenge the improbable and attain the impossible — William Arthur Ward

Loneliness has little to do with what we do or where we do it, whether we're married or unmarried, optimists or pessimists, heterosexual or homosexual. Loneliness has to do with the sudden clefts we experience in every human relation, the gaps that open up with such stomach-turning unexpectedness. In a brief moment, I and my brother or sister have moved away into different worlds, and there is no language we can share ... It is in the middle of intimacy that the reality of loneliness most dramatically appears. — Rowan Williams

I have noticed that the stoutest pessimists, when fate or men try to take something out of their lives, fight tooth and nail, and cry out as loud as the greatest optimists. — Henryk Sienkiewicz

It's hard to argue against cynics - they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side. — Molly Ivins

The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe that bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe that defeat is just a temporary setback or a challenge, that its causes are just confined to this one case. — Martin Seligman

Conservatism is pessimistic, with a negative tendency - which we mostly resist - towards despair. Liberals are optimists, with a negative tendency, rarely resisted, towards utopianism. — John Derbyshire

But we are always optimists when it comes to time; we think there will be time to do things with other people. And time to say things to them. — Fredrik Backman

Optimists are happier in life for a reason. — Brendon Burchard

Pessimists thrive while optimists starve. — Zachariah Dracoulis

I will be the first to admit that I am a pessimist by nature. It is, after all, the wisest way to be. We pessimists have everything to gain, whereas optimists have a fifty-fifty chance of being disappointed. — Tamar Myers

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

The pessimist borrows trouble; the optimists lend encouragement. — William Arthur Ward

Indeed optimists rather than defeatists have produced the results for which serious genealogical research is best known. — Alex Haley

Some people would say comedy draws from some dark places, from your dark stuff. Life's great optimists aren't necessarily the funniest people. — Colin Firth

His point is that when the two seem incompatible we often hang onto the plan, ignore the warnings reality offers us, and so plunge into trouble. Afraid of the darkness of the unknown, the spaces in which we see only dimly, we often choose the darkness of closed eyes, of obliviousness. Gonzalez adds, "Researchers point out that people tend to take any information as confirmation of their mental models. We are by nature optimists, if optimism means that we believe we see the world as it is. And under the influence of a plan, it's easy to see what we want to see." It's the job of writers and explorers to see more, to travel light when it comes to preconception, — Rebecca Solnit

Pessimists beat their heads against walls, while optimists open doors. — Wes Fesler

But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution. — Barbara Ehrenreich

The world belongs to optimists. Pessimists are only spectators. — Francois Guizot

Stealing things is everybody's problem. We [Apple Inc.] own a lot of intellectual property, and we don't like when people steal it. So people are stealing stuff and we're optimists. We believe that 80 percent of the people stealing stuff don't want to be; there's just no legal alternative. — Steve Jobs

We are not optimists; we do not present a lovely vision of the world which everyone is expected to fall in love with. We simply have, wherever we are, some small local task to do, on the side of justice, for the poor. - HERBERT MCCABE, OP — Terry Eagleton

Optimists focus on the place they are going. Pessimists focus on the obstacles along the route. To become an optimist simply look ahead. — Simon Sinek

By far the most dangerous people in the world are optimists (those who believe that all can be made well here below). If you think all can be made well in this world, then you will go to any extreme to make it happen. There is the story of the 20th century. As Lenin said, "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs". — Robert Barron

Then there are the optimists. The story continues, but it stays the same. The princess lives happily ever after with her prince, probably pops out a few kids and carries on the bloodline. Marriages survive, families continue, and good prevails over evil. These are the people who cannot bear deviations from the rule. Everything fits into neat little boxes. When bad things happen, they ignore it, or use some quote about everything happening for a reason, or what doesn't kill us make us stronger. They carry on without even talking about their bad experiences, pretending everything is all right. — Sarah Dalton

The library refused many downloads, of course, but I succeeded with two Optimists translated from the Late English, Orwell and Huxley; — David Mitchell

I found my way to street level and into what optimists call 'fresh air — Gunnar Staalesen

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

Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven. — Alice Thomas Ellis

The bottom line on attitude is that a good one helps to increase your possibilities. Pessimists usually get what they expect. So do optimists. — John C. Maxwell

Here is one optimists reason for believing unity will prevail ... within the next hundred years ... nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century
citizen of the world
will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st. All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary. — Strobe Talbott

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past, — Walter Cronkite

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

I don't know one thing about the future. I don't know what the next hour will hold. There may be sickness, accident, personal or world catastrophe. Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection. I don't know what the future holds for me, for those I love, for my nation, for this world. Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will, and I cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing will separate me from Christ's love. — Eugene H. Peterson

Americans are optimists. They hope they'll be wealthy someday - and they're positive they can get one more brushful of paint out of an empty can. — Bernard Williams

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. — Fred Brooks

we are always optimists when it comes to time; we — Fredrik Backman

Optimists move through life with a happy exterior. What happens on the inside shows up on the outside. — Marilyn Suttle

Life belongs to optimists. Pessimists are just viewers. Making it real, starts with our attitude. — Cathy Burnham Martin

Optimists see the glass as half full.
Pessimists see the glass as half empty.

Experiential trainers see the whole glass and its context. — Bogdan Vaida

The dry high spirits of this destroyer of optimism make most optimists look damp and depressed. — Philip Littell

Optimists and pessimists die the exact same death, but they live very different lives! — Shimon Peres

There's a myth among amateurs, optimists and fools that beyond a certain level of achievement, famous artists retire to some kind of Elysium where criticism no longer wounds and work materializes without their effort. — Mark Matousek

Optimists are intrinsically happier and happiness breeds further happiness. Light a candle rather than curse the darkness and do not wait for someone else to light it; do it yourself. — Natasha Murtagh

Dogwoods are great optimists. Daffodils wait and see, crouching firmly underground just in case spring doesn't come this year, but dogwoods have faith. — Barbara Holland

I'm a lawyer. Pessimists see a glass half-empty; optimists see a glass half-full. Lawyers see a glass containing possible carcinogenic materials without a warning label. Skepticism is coded in our DNA. — Naima Simone

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

As Americans, we have traditionally been the optimists sporting the 'can-do' attitude. But when it comes to addressing climate adaptation and resiliency, we seem to be more 'can't do' than 'can-do.' — Paul Tonko

Definitely not - you optimists just can't understand that a depressed person doesn't want you to try and cheer them up. It makes us sick. — Brandon Sanderson

When difficulties seem insurmountable, optimists react in a more constructive and creative way. They accept the facts with realism, know how to rapidly identify the positive in adversity, draw lessons from it, and come up with an alternative solution or turn to a new project. Pessimists would rather turn away from the problem or adopt escapist strategies - sleep, isolation, drug or alcohol abuse - that diminish their focus on the problem.9 Instead of confronting them with resolve, they prefer to brood over their misfortunes, nurture illusions, dream up "magic" solutions, and accuse the whole world of being against them. They have a hard time drawing lessons from the past, which often leads to the repetition of their problems. They are more fatalistic ("I told you it wouldn't work. It's always the same, no matter what I do") and are quick to see themselves as "mere pawns in the game of life. — Matthieu Ricard

The people who dismiss concerns about global warming seem to be the pessimists who would rather give up than own up to the problems we have all created. The people who worry most about what we are doing to the planet are the optimists who believe we also have the intelligence - we, as a species, working together - to come up with powerful solutions to the problems we're working on that will change the world for the better. Which way of looking at the world is going to produce a Next Greatest Generation? Will it be the ones who give up, or the ones who get going? Making — Bill Nye

They will also tell you how far along we are along the depletion curve; the optimists among them will even claim that there is nothing to worry about, because we have two or three decades of production left at the current level. It is to be expected that we will run out of fossil fuels before we run out of optimists, who are, along with fools and madmen, a renewable resource. — Dmitry Orlov

To satisfy both optimists and pessimists, we may conclude by saying that we are on the threshold of both heaven and hell, moving nervously between the gateway of the one and the anteroom of the other. History has still not decided where we will end up, and a string of coincidences might yet send us rolling in either direction. — Yuval Noah Harari

They cannot indulge in any detailed or merely logical defense of life; that would delay the enjoyment of it. These higher optimists, of whom Dickens was one, do not approve of the universe; they do not even admire the universe; they fall in love with it. They embrace life too close to criticize or even to see it. Existence to such men has the wild beauty of a woman, and those love her with most intensity who love her with least cause. — G.K. Chesterton

We are optimists by instinct, pessimists by thought. — Marty Rubin

The atheists I know, virtually all of whom are happy and mentally healthy, might more properly be called anti-nihilists. We are mainly optimists who love our lives and find them to be full of meaning and purpose. — Dan Barker

I shall not assess arguments and evidence for competing views about when human extinction will occur. We know it will occur, and this fact has a curious effect on my argument. In a strange way it makes my argument an optimistic one. Although things are now not the way they should be - there are people when there should be none - things will someday be the way they should be - there will be no people. In other words, although things are now bad, they will be better, even if they first get worse with the creation of new people. Some may wish to be spared this kind of optimism, but some optimists may take a measure of comfort in this observation. — David Benatar

Cynical' is a term invented by optimists to describe realists. — Anonymous

As a bull market turns into a bear market, the new pros turn into optimists, hoping and praying the bear market will become a bull and save them. But as the market remains bearish, the optimists become pessimists, quit the profession, and return to their day jobs. This is when the real professional investors re-enter the market. — Robert Kiyosaki

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

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past. — Lewis Mumford

There would be a lot more optimists if it weren't for the rise-and-shine requierement. — Robert Breault

Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing
its goodness. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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