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.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, 'I am with you kid. Let's go.'

In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your president. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which it may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little.

Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass, is my point. But I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash.

There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature.

It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world -- that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. throw the burden on yourselves!

First, believe in the world-that there is meaning behind everything.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... The truly wise person is color-blind.

an optimist is a guy that has never had much experience

They tell us we must learn to live with less, and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been; that the America of the coming years will be a place where - because of our past excesses - it will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true. I don't believe that. And, I don't believe you do either. That is why I am seeking the presidency. I cannot and will not stand by and see this great country destroy itself. Our leaders attempt to blame their failures on circumstances beyond their control, on false estimates by unknown, unidentifiable experts who rewrite modern history in an attempt to convince us our high standard of living, the result of thrift and hard work, is somehow selfish extravagance which we must renounce as we join in sharing scarcity. I don't agree that our nation must resign itself to inevitable decline, yielding its proud position to other hands. I am totally unwilling to see this country fail in its obligation to itself and to the other free peoples of the world.

...the sky's the limit for all Americans if we have the right kind of leadership.

I think that the vice president is a person reflecting a half-glass-full mentality, and that is he's been able to look at - as have I, and I hope other Americans have - the fact that the tyrant was removed, 12 million people voted, there is an Iraqi constitution in place that is a model for - and unique for the Middle East.

Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life, The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past,-so good night!

:some say that Happiness is not Good for Mortals & they ought to be answerd that Sorrow is not fit for Immortals & is utterly useless to any one a blight never does good to a tree & if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit let none say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight.

Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose.

What comfort there is in a cheerful spirit! how the heart leaps up to meet a sunshiny face, a merry tongue, an even temper, and a heart which either naturally, or, what is better, from conscientious principle, has learned to take all things on their bright side, believing that the Giver of life being all-perfect Love, the best offering we can make to Him is to enjoy to the full what He sends of good, and bear what He allows of evil! ~ Ch. 10

Ev'rything's gonna be alright So, no woman, no cry

I choose to live in a universe that has some hope in it.

Leaders must be optimists. Their vision was beyond the present and set on a future of real peace and true freedom.

'Good morning, Pooh Bear', said Eeyore gloomily. 'If it is a good morning', he said. 'Which I doubt', said he.

If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will.

I said, 'The years with change advance: If I make dark my countenance, I shut my life from happier chance.

Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist.

It is important, when your techical equipment is not the best, to believe there will always be a better race; that is a part of my motivation.

In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? I'm not talking about blind optimism here... No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. The audacity of hope!

People: 'People are really amazing when you sit back and think about it. They are funny, curious, and never seem to stop amazing me with the clever things they come up with. I have met a lot of people in the world. I can say from my experience that most people are good.'

We are young And we are friends of time.

I have lost more than a beloved friend. I have lost an inspiration. She would rather light candles than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.

Oh, quit being such a Pollyanna.

Mon centre cede, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque.

Many who have visited me in Washington in the past few months may have been surprised when I have told them that personally and because of my own daily contacts with all manner of difficult situations I am more concerned and less cheerful about international world conditions than about our immediate domestic prospects. I say this to you not as a confirmed pessimist but as one who still hopes that envy, hatred and malice among Nations have reached their peak and will be succeeded by a new tide of peace and good-will.

'Fuck today, it's tomorrow.'

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist invents the parachute.

I'm an optimist because I believe that I'm right. I'm a person at peace with myself. It was our turn to face a serious threat to peace.

The pessimist is commonly spoken of as the man in revolt. He is not. Firstly, because it requires some cheerfulness to continue in revolt, and secondly, because pessimism appeals to the weaker side of everybody, and the pessimist, therefore, drives as roaring a trade as the publican. The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons of God.

Nothing specific stood out against the vast background of the future that she thus evoked: the days were all of them splendid, and as alike as the waves of the sea; and the whole thing hovered on the horizon, infinite, harmonious, blue and sparkling in the sun.

Our minds are not hopeful, thought Janet; but our nerves are made of optimistic stuff.

Le lendemain Rastignac s'habilla fort elegamment, et alla, vers trois heures de l'apres-midi, chez madame de Restaud, en se livrant pendant la route a ces esperances etourdiment folles qui rendent la vie des jeunes gens si belle d'emotions: ils ne calculent alors ni les obstacles ni les dangers, ils voient en tout le succes, poetisent leur existence par le seul jeu de leur imagination, et se font malheureux ou tristes par le renversement de projets qui ne vivaient encore que dans leurs desirs effrenes; s'ils n'etaient pas ignorants et timides, le monde social serait impossible.

It is your task, of course, to put the best interpretation on the facts. Sometimes they will bear it. What do you propose?

Mrs Prentice: You put me in an impossible position. Nick: No position is impossible when you're young and healthy.

When the sky falleth we shall have larks.

Do not lose heart! The steeper the road the faster it rises toward ever wider horizons.

We're all interconnected, we're all essential parts of this story here we call reality. Remember, have an open mind. Throw pessimism out the door. Anything is possible. And be attached to nothing. Things come and they go. And they come again. It has been my pleasure being here with you. I hope to see each and every one of you again. I take your hearts with me. I leave my heart with you. Live long, and prosper!

Life has improved, comrades. Life has become more joyous.

'I decided to go visit the pet cemetery where my dead dog Buster was buried. My grandmother always used to say, 'When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.' But you can't make lemonade out of a dead dog, no matter how hard you try.'

If we can put a man on the Moon, why can't we put a man on the moon?

[W]e are assured not just that things will work out over time, but that scarcity is 'vanishing before our eyes.' Why, look - even as we watch - those 2.8 billion people are going to find food on their plates. Look again in a few hours and their shacks will have toilets - and then air conditioning. In a few days, they'll likely have DVD systems and be doing their banking by cellphone.

With all this manure around, there's got to be a pony someplace.

I am immortal! I know it! I feel it! Hope floods my heart with delight! Running on air mad with life dizzy, reeling, Upward I mount, - faith is sight, life is feeling, Hope is the day-star of might!

Radiant with ardour divine! Beacons of Hope ye appear! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow.

Norman Angell speaks to the intellect. He is cool and clear. He has a profound belief in reason and in rationalism. He is convinced that at long last reason will prevail when we succeed in sweeping away the mists of illusion and intellectual error.

He has a profound and warm belief in what he calls in one of his books 'the potential rationalism of mankind'. Let us hope that his optimism may be vindicated.

Yes, it was riveting. Despite everything, you knew there was goodness there. Something to believe in. Something which is good, pure and untainted by anything.

I like Houston. It's the last great 19th-century city. Houston has a spirit about it that is truly American, an optimism. People there aren't afraid to try something new.

Next time... we will laugh more, we'll love more; we just won't be so afraid.

Through love to light! Oh wonderful the way That leads from darkness to the perfect day!

President Reagan was the Churchill of his era. His commitment to the principles of freedom and democracy and his boundless optimism for humanity will remain an inspiration for us all.

We can determine America's future. After all, that's what an election is all about. So let's decide for optimism, not pessimism; for hope, not despair; for strength, not weakness; for victory, not defeat.

She always had a way of finding such goodness in others. If someone hurt her, she'd say, 'Oh, Sheliah, I'm sure they didn't mean to.' She'd always make excuses for others. Sharon was just totally loving and also totally vulnerable. She was just a remarkable person, she never gave up on anybody.