206 Optimism Quotes

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

The reports on human progress are beginning to come in, and some are a little discouraging.

Saying you have a political solution is like saying you can write a pop song that's going to stay at the top of the list forever. I don't have many illusions about this, but I'm not cynical about it.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint.

Looking Backward was written in the belief that the Golden Age lies before us and not behind us.

My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.

It's a great day for a ball game; let's play two!

The Cubs are due in sixty-two.

The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.

Life is too short to have anything but delusional notions about yourself.

Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.

If you live long enough, lots of nice things happen.

Everything's funny for God's sake. Everything.

[After a poor prognosis for recovery from her doctor following her 1990 bus accident] I said if it is up to me, I'm going to be OK.

Many things are possible. Few things are certain.

Then there is a still higher type of courage - the courage to brave pain, to live with it, to never let others know of it and to still find joy in life; to wake up in the morning with an enthusiasm for the day ahead.

I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it and you'll start believing in it.

You may hear people say that submarines have done away with the battleship, and that aircraft have annulled the mastery of the sea. That is what our pessimists say. But do you imagine that the clumsy submarine or the fragile aeroplane is really the last word of science?

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

Being an optimist after you've got everything you want doesn't count.

I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.

I'm a pessimist about probabilities; I'm an optimist about possibilities.

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

We have every reason to rejoice when there are so many gains and when favorable conditions abound on every hand. The end is not yet in sight, but it can not be far away. The road before us is shorter than the road behind.

Look for the beauty in things.

Optimism is the opium of the people.

I don't want to live in a culture of despair. I'd like to live in a culture of hope.

The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.

My hopes are not always realized, but I always hope.

There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

The religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

Optimist, n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

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

My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century. Recalling what has happened in my short lifetime in the fields of communication and transportation and the life sciences, I marvel at the pessimists who tell us that we have reached the end of our productive capacity, who project a future of primarily dividing up what we now have and making do with less. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.

I suppose, to use our national motto, something will turn up.

He was fresh and full of faith that 'something would turn up.'

The world is a wheel, and it will all come round right.

It's possible, you can never know, that the universe exists only for me. If so, it's sure going well for me, I must admit.

It's great to be back here. Wherever the hell I am, I always have a great time when I'm here.

That gives me tremendous encouragement and optimism for the human race in general, that people choose to go off and do their own things.

I find the audiences very excited. But then they come and say to me, 'Your optimism has brushed off on me. I didn't know we had an option. I feel so much better.' They say, 'Your optimism.' And I am not optimistic or pessimistic. I feel that optimism and pessimism are very unbalanced. I am a very hard engineer. I am a mechanic. I am a sailor. I am an air pilot. I don't tell people I can get you across the ocean with my ship unless I know what I'm talking about.

I think it's absolutely touch-and-go whether we're going to make it. But the point is, for me to tell you that you have an option is not to be optimistic... Time and again, of course I am running into millions who don't know we have the option, because it's invisible, and I feel I have tremendous responsibility. So when people ask me to come and talk to them, I do my best to let them know they do have the option. Of course they're pessimistic, not knowing that.

When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start to go right they often go on getting better and better. (ch.15)

My philosophy is I'm gonna fight as hard as I can to keep all the bad things from happening. But if they are gonna happen and I happen to be in the city where they are happening - like in the song, 'California Earthquake' - then there's not much I can do about it. I can't uproot my whole life, just because I have a feeling that things may not work out all right. There's also always the chance that everything is going to be just swell, guys. Just hang in there. But I don't think it can happen on it's own.

Will you succeed? Yes you will indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

There was a spirit of ex-empire, this thing of 'things can't be done', whereas in America, I thought there was a spirit of 'can be done!', the pioneer thing. 'Go do it, what do you want to do?' 'I want to put babies on spikes.' 'Go, then! Go! What a wonderful idea. It's the American Dream!'

With our love, we could save the world.

All Nature wears one universal grin.

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.

I would hope to think that this is maybe hell. Maybe this is hell because then we could go on to something else. Because this ain't so bad. (1995)

Wings I saw springing from fair women's shoulders, and from beneath rubble I've seen butterflies flutter.

I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts. You think there is no pleasure to be had in life. That is because you are heartsick and - and tired, as you say. With one sad story ended you are afraid to begin another - a sequel - feeling it would be equally sad. But why should it be? Isn't the joy or sorrow equally divided in life?

I wanted a happy-go-lucky guy. He has quirks and problems, but the thing is, he doesn't know he's got them. Hence, no tedious self-pity. He's smart and strong, an introvert, but any anguish he suffers is caused by others.

I am so often accused of gloominess and melancholy. And I think I'm probably the most cheerful man around. I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin. ... I think those descriptions of me are quite inappropriate to the gravity of the predicament that faces us all. I've always been free from hope. It's never been one of my great solaces. I feel that more and more we're invited to make ourselves strong and cheerful. .... I think that it was Ben Jonson who said, I have studied all the theologies and all the philosophies, but cheerfulness keeps breaking through.

Too much of a good thing can be simply wonderful.[8]

Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Be realistic: Plan for a miracle.

In the end it's the big picture which changes nations and whatever our opponents may say, Australia's changed inexorably for good, for the better.

The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

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.

My sun sets to rise again.

Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup.

Trials never end, of course. Unhappiness and misfortune are bound to occur as long as people live, but there is a feeling now, that was not here before, and is not just on the surface of things, but penetrates all the way through: We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.

Did satisfy myself mighty fair in the truth of the saying that the world do not grow old at all, but is in as good condition in all respects as ever it was.

Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.