Philosophy Of Pessimism Quotes & Sayings

Pessimism is an emotion not a philosophy. — Immortal Technique

Leonard and Virginia married in August 1912. Virginia was 30. Soon after her marriage she suVered another breakdown and her mental health declined sporadically over the following year, culminating in a suicide attempt in September 1913. They were advised against having children because of Virginia's recurring depressive illness, a cause of some regret to her, and a point of much heated debate among her later biographers. — Jane Goldman

In my heart's most secret place,
I pity them as angels do. — Sara Teasdale

One physician may gravely exaggerate an illness and give up hope altogether. Another may ignorantly declare that there is no illness and that no treatment is necessary, thus deceiving the patient with false consolation. You may call the first one pessimistic and the second one optimistic. Both are equally dangerous. — Walpola Rahula

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. — Charles Sanders Peirce

In raising problems without solutions, in posing questions without answers, in retreating to the hermetic, cavernous abode of complaint, pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes - the crime of not pretending it's for real. Pessimism fails to live up to the most basic tenet of philosophy - the "as if." Think as if it will be helpful, act as if it will make a difference, speak as if there is something to say, live as if you are not, in fact, being lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied. — Eugene Thacker

There is a very thin line of difference between a Pessimist and a Perfectionist. Both are scared to fail, strive for ideal but the only think unlike in the two is- Pessimist thinks it will last forever and Perfectionist knows it won't. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

If the European grows accustomed not to rule, a generation and a half will be sufficient to bring the old continent, and the whole world along with it, into mortal inertia, intellectual sterility, universal barbarism. It is only the illusion of rule, and the discipline of responsibility which it entails, that can keep Western minds in tension. Science, art, technique, and all the rest live on the tonic atmosphere created by the consciousness of authority. If this is lacking, the European will gradually become degraded. Minds will no longer have the radical faith in themselves which impels them, energetic, daring, tenacious, towards the capture of great new ideas in every order of life. The European will inevitably become a day-to-day man. Incapable of creative, specialized effort, he will always be falling back on yesterday, on custom, on routine. He will turn into a commonplace, conventional, empty creature, like the Greeks of the decadence and those of the Byzantine epoch. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Life is short unless agony is long. — Brian Spellman

I'm a fanatic about Irish music. I love its moody, modal and timeless quality. I'm different from some other composers, because I don't look at this as just a job. I think of music as art. — James Horner

Look into my eyes and
You'll see my mind.
A tranquil city,
That rebuilt itself and left the past behind. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

If you only go around once in life, then why has that one gone around more than once? — Brian Spellman

Tears streamed down her wrinkled face. This world that she had longed to change for the better was as bad as the one into which she had been born. "An exercise in futility," she murmured. — Gary Inbinder

I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. — Abraham Lincoln

I understand these dogs. I know what it's like to be cast aside, to feel unwanted, to believe you have no one to fight for you. I've been there. Time and time again. It hurts like all hell, but if I don't fight for them, who will? — Karina Halle

Not my problem" is not a philosophy. It's a mental illness. Right up there with pessimism. Other people's problems are our problems. If your neighbor is laid off, you may feel as if you've dodged the bullet, but you haven't. The bullet hit you as well. You just don't feel the pain yet. Or as Ruut Veenhoven told me: "The quality of a society is more important than your place in that society." In other words, better to be a small fish in a clean pond than a big fish in a polluted lake. Lesson — Eric Weiner

Having a rather pessimistic outlook on life makes for the best philosophical discussions; distress is the only real reason to question something; comfort often leads to the inability to change. — Moryah DeMott

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them. — Horace

The logic of pessimism moves through three refusals: a no-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-for-us, or Schopenhauer's tears); a yes-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-in-itself, or Nietzsche's laughter); and a no-saying to the for-us and the in-itself (a double refusal, or Cioran's sleep).

Crying, laughing, sleeping - what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent? — Eugene Thacker

Pessimism is a funny thing, isn't it? Madison thought as she looked at Judith's furrowed face. I like a bit of pessimism as much as the next man, but when I'm bombarded with it I suddenly became an eternal optimist. — Melissa Kite

Now it was winter. He hated the damp of Paris. "Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of Europe!" Jefferson wrote in 1785.48 "I find the general fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the hammer or the anvil." As much as Jefferson loved France, residence abroad gave him a greater appreciation for his own nation. "My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy," Jefferson wrote Monroe.49 "I confess I had no idea of it myself. — Jon Meacham

What I love I destroy. What I destroy, I love. — Robert Jordan

Women love hairy men. Cavemen were the sexiest men in history. — Leslie Mann

Now, what is the left's worldview in general? What is it? If you had to attach not a philosophy but an attitude to a leftist worldview, it's one of pessimism and darkness, sadness. They're never happy, are they? They're always angry about something. No matter what they get, they're always angry. — Rush Limbaugh

The benefits of a philosophy of neo-religious pessimism are nowhere more apparent than in relation to marriage, one of modern society's most grief-stricken arrangements, which has been rendered unnecessarily hellish by the astonishing secular supposition that it should be entered into principally for the sake of happiness. Christianity and Judaism present marriage not as a union inspired and governed by subjective enthusiasm but rather, and more modestly, as a mechanism by which individuals can assume an adult position in society and thence, with the help of a close friend, undertake to nurture and educate the next generation under divine guidance. These limited expectations tend to forestall the suspicion, so familiar to secular partners, that there might have been more intense, angelic or less fraught alternatives available elsewhere. Within the religious ideal, friction, disputes and boredom are signs not of error, but of life proceeding according to plan. — Alain De Botton

I refuse to despair in this moment. I refuse to allow myself to fall into the dark chambers of pessimism, because I think in any social revolution the one thing that keeps it going is hope, and when hope dies somehow the revolution degenerates into a kind of nihilistic philosophy which says you must engage in disruption for disruption's sake. ... I believe that the forces of goodwill, white and black, in this country can work together to bring about a resolution. ... We have the resources to do it. ... — Tavis Smiley

This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream? — Marguerite Yourcenar

Our God is abundant in love and steadfast in mercy. He saves us, not because we trust in a symbol, but because we trust in a Savior. — Max Lucado

It seems to me like a perversion of talent for an artist of any kind to further the corporate structure of America or the personal interests of the morons and thieves who run it. — George Carlin

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible — Arthur Schopenhauer

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war. — Thucydides

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 best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Everything about me and him and life makes so much sense when we're together like this.He makes me feel more beautiful.More important.More loved.I feel more everything — Colleen Hoover

Lesson number one: "Not my problem" is not a philosophy. It's a mental illness. Right up there with pessimism. Other people's problems are our problems. If your neighbor is laid off, you may feel as if you've dodged the bullet, but you haven't. The bullet hit you as well. You just don't feel the pain yet. Or as Ruut Veenhoven told me: "The quality of a society is more important than your place in that society." In other words, better to be a small fish in a clean pond than a big fish in a polluted lake. — Eric Weiner

I am not a Pessimist. Indeed I am not sure that I quite know what Pessimism really means. All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, it cannot be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next. — Oscar Wilde

Little Pessimism in life reminds of staying alive and not wandering in a fairy land. — Vikram Adhikari

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust. — Kingsley Amis

The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy. — Helen Keller

Horrle was nodding gravely, humoring him, probably thinking that out of all these two hundred fun-loving people it was just his luck to have run into a doom merchant. McIntyre had committed the sin of pessimism, of course, forgetting, as a Brit, that out here optimism was more than a state of mind; optimism was a philosophy. — Christopher Hudson

We are swimming upstream against a great torrent of disorganization ... In this, our main obligation is to establish arbitrary enclaves of order and system ... It is the greatest possible victory to be, to continue to be, and to have been. No defeat can deprive us of the success of having existed for some moment of time in a universe that seems indifferent to us.
This is no defeatism ... The declaration of our own nature and the attempt to build up an enclave of organization in the face of nature's overwhelming tendency to disorder is an insolence against the gods and the iron necessity that they impose. Here lies tragedy, but here lies glory too ...
All this represents the manner in which I believe I have been able to add something positive to the pessimism of ... the existensialists. I have not replaced the gloom of existence by a philosophy which is optimistic in any Pollyanna sense, but ... with a positive attitude toward the universe and toward our life in it. — Norbert Wiener

I opposed the war in Iraq because I did not believe it was in our national security interest, and I still don't. What we [America] did was akin to taking a baseball bat to a beehive. Our primary security threat right now is terrorism
and by doing what we did in Iraq, we've managed to alienate a good part of the world and most of the allies whose intelligence and other help we need to combat and defeat terrorism. — Jerry Springer

There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable. — Arthur Schopenhauer

See the moon? It hates us. — Donald Barthelme