Selected optimism quotes

1. 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.

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

3. I try to take life as it comes, and just hope it keeps coming.

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

5. In the contradiction lies the hope.

6. I've been lucky. I'll be lucky again.

7. 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.

8. The one who is happy can never get too early out of bed.

9. Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.

10. 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.

11. A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.

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

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

14. A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.

15. I believe the Universe is planned for good.

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

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

18. The Cubs are due in sixty-two.

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

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

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

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

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

24. [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.

25. Many things are possible. Few things are certain.

26. 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.

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

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

29. 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?

30. I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

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

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

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

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

35. 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.

36. Look for the beauty in things.

37. Optimism is the opium of the people.

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

39. 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.

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

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

42. [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.

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

44. 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!

45. 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.

46. 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.

47. 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.

48. 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.

49. 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.

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

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

52. 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.

53. 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.

54. 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.

55. Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.

56. I have no idea when the Golden Age was, but as far as I'm concerned, wherever I am is the Golden Age!

57. A better world has gotta start somewhere. Why not with you and me?

58. Pogo is 'the reasonably patient, soft-hearted, naive, friendly little person we all think we are'

59. Please don't worry about me, Captain Patzig. I'm an incurable optimist. And as far as those fellows are concerned, I think I know how to get along with them.

60. I never quite despair and I read Shakspeare - indeed I shall I think never read any other Book much [...] I am very near Agreeing with Hazlit that Shakspeare is enough for us.

61. Sonja: I do believe that this is truly the best of all possible worlds. Boris: Well, it's certainly the most expensive.

62. In the end, it will all be okay. If it's not okay, then it's not the end.

63. 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

64. Cause I think we can make it, in fact, I'm sure/And if you fall, stand tall and comeback for more

65. Sparks fly upward.

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

67. I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning...

68. Expect the best, prepare for the worst.

69. 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?

70. 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.

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

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

73. 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.

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

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

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

77. 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.

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

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

80. 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.

81. 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.

82. 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)

83. 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.

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

85. 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!'

86. With our love, we could save the world.

87. All Nature wears one universal grin.

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

89. 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)

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

91. 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?

92. 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.

93. 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.

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

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

96. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

97. Be realistic: Plan for a miracle.

98. 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.

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

100. 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.