Quotes & Sayings About Pessimist And Optimist

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

The pessimist sees only the tunnel; the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel; the realist sees the tunnel and the light - and the next tunnel. — Sydney J. Harris

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

What is an optimist? The man who says, "It's worse everywhere else. We're better off than the rest of the world. We've been lucky." He is happy with things as they are and he doesn't torment himself.
What is a pessimist? The man who says, "Things are fine everywhere but here. Everyone else is better off than we are. We're the only ones who've had a bad break." He torments himself continually. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. — James Branch Cabell

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

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

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

But it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation to the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist. — Charles Williams

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

Reciprocal illusions: the pessimist's fear and the optimist's hope. — Marty Rubin

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

The phenomenal thing that happened to me is that I was able to create two memorable men: one is the ultimate optimist, Rocky, and then you have Rambo, the ultimate pessimist. You're going to always be remembered for them, no matter what you do. — Sylvester Stallone

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

In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right. — Jack Nicholson

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

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

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

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

Sometimes it's not the light in a person you fall in love with, but the dark. 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. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The lesson: If the optimist says the glass is half full, and the pessimist says the glass is half empty, the physicist ducks. — Randall Munroe

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

Imagine a delicious glass of summer iced tea.
Take a long cool sip. Listen to the ice crackle and clink.
Is the glass part full or part empty?
Take another sip.
And now? — Vera Nazarian

The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true." — James Branch Cabell

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

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

Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better. — Martin Seligman

Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament- it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing the risks you can't avoid. This permits you to play out the game untroubled by the certainty of the outcome. — Robert A. Heinlein

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

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

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose. — Kahlil Gibran

Finally, the optimist's impatience with or condemnation of pessimism often has a smug macho tone to it (although males have no monopoly of it). There is a scorn for the perceived weakness of the pessimist who should instead 'grin and bear it'. This view is defective for the same reason that macho views about other kinds of suffering are defective. It is an indifference to or inappropriate denial of suffering, whether one's own or that of others. The injunction to 'look on the bright side' should be greeted with a large dose of both scepticism and cynicism. To insist that the bright side is always the right side is to put ideology before the evidence. Every cloud, to change metaphors, may have a silver lining, but it may very often be the cloud rather than the lining on which one should focus if one is to avoid being drenched by self-deception. Cheery optimists have a much less realistic view of themselves than do those who are depressed. — David Benatar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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