Optimism

Optimism, the opposite of pessimism, exemplifies a lifeview where one looks upon the world as a positive place. Optimists generally believe that people and events are inherently good. They have a so-called "positive" outlook on life, believing that things will work out in the end.

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  • The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
  • For myself I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
  • Jerry boy, why do you have to paint everything so black? Suppose you got hit by a truck. Suppose the stock market crashes. Suppose Mary Pickford divorces Douglas Fairbanks. Suppose the Dodgers leave Brooklyn!
  • Two men look out through the same bars:
    One sees the mud, and one the stars.
    • Frederick Langbridge (1849–1923), A Cluster of Quiet Thoughts
  • Despite the cautions just raised, there is abundant reason to believe that optimism – big, little, and in between – is useful to a person because positive expectations can be self-fulfilling.
    • Christopher Peterson, American Psychologist, ISSN 0003-066X, January 2000, p. 51
  • "Optimist" is a word which here refers to a person...who thinks pleasant thoughts about nearly everything. For instance, if an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well, this isn't too bad. I don't have my arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me if I am right-handed or left-handed", but most of us would say something more along the lines of "Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!"
  • This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have believed it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.
  • The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
  • My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.
    • Ellen Willis, "Tom Wolfe's Failed Optimism" (1977), Beginning To See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981)
  • The Doctor: Where's your joy in life? Where's your optimism?
    Romana: It opted out.
  • K9: Optimism: belief that everything will work out well. Irrational, bordering on insane.
  • I came out of my mom’s stomach thinking I was going to own America.
    • Caprice Bourret (b. 1971), American model and businesswoman. Stated by her in her appearance on the chat show Live from Studio Five, Channel 5 (UK) television, 18th November 2009
  • 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.
  • Optimism is good for overcoming obstacles that are part of daily life, but over-optimism can blind us to adversities that need addressing.
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  • A positive attitude might not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
    • Herm Albright
  • Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.
  • I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.
    • Max Lerner
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External links

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Last modified on 13 May 2013, at 18:04