The United States is the ultimate land of optimistic promise, but it also gave birth to quintessentially pessimistic tragedy: 'Moby-Dick.'
A. N. Wilson
If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you're just one more deluded Pollyanna.
Abraham Maslow
I am incrementally a pessimist, but I see the international debate that Edward Snowden has engendered, and I think this is exactly where the discussion should be. So, I would say I'm more optimistic than pessimistic.
Adam Savage
A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.
Aldous Huxley
Spending time with negative people can be the fastest way to ruin a good mood. Their pessimistic outlooks and gloomy attitude can decrease our motivation and change the way we feel. But allowing a negative person to dictate your emotions gives them too much power in your life. Make a conscious effort to choose your attitude.
Amy Morin
I am pessimistically optimistic.
Anna Madeley
I'm very pessimistic.
B. F. Skinner
I get very confused about being called a comedian, because when you say 'I'm a comedian,' people expect you to crack a joke. Maybe I use laughter and humour to make people think. I don't know what you call that - a humourist? A satirist? A pessimistic comedian? I don't know. Satirists can be very dark.
Bassem Youssef
These days I wonder more and more why people are pessimistic when American history actually supports optimism.
bell hooks
Vermonters often ask me whether I am pessimistic about the future of our country. My honest answer is that I am not.
Bernie Sanders
Honestly, I had a very realistic, probably pessimistic outlook at the beginning of my career post-graduation of drama school. In general, I would see black women, usually older, playing a certain archetype on procedural shows. I thought, 'Okay, that's what I have to look forward to.'
Betty Gabriel
When thinking about the future, it is fashionable to be pessimistic. Yet the evidence unequivocally belies such pessimism. Over the past centuries, humanity's lot has improved dramatically - in the developed world, where it is rather obvious, but also in the developing world, where life expectancy has more than doubled in the past 100 years.
Bjorn Lomborg
Every economy is uncertain. Referring to this or any economy as 'uncertain' is an unnecessary and pessimistic redundancy.
Bo Bennett
Gospel music is never pessimistic, it's never 'oh my god, its all going down the tubes', like the blues often is.
Brian Eno
I have a very pessimistic view that every win takes you closer to a loss because no-one in the world can keep on winning forever.
Bronte Campbell
When I look at the world I'm pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.
Carl Rogers
In this pessimistic world, especially in America, a positive outlook is very necessary.
Carlos Mencia
This is what old guys do. They get dark and pessimistic.
Charles Murray
When you have vision it affects your attitude. Your attitude is optimistic rather than pessimistic.
Charles R. Swindoll
The paucity of near-future U.S. scifi is about the country becoming pessimistic, not being able to see the future clearly. There's a trend in U.S. scifi towards militarism and far-future stuff.
Charles Stross
The stock market crash in October 1929 didn't destroy a particularly large amount of wealth or make people highly pessimistic. Rather, it made companies and consumers very unsure about future income, and so led them to stop spending as they waited for more information.
In pessimistic moments, when I was trudging London in search of an employer wanting to make use of such talents as I could offer, it seemed to me, almost, that my father had got to where he was by climbing upon my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and had left me with nothing but the empty fame of being his son.
I'm not pessimistic about people in general, but only about the way they live.
The '80s have been so much doom and gloom. We've become very pessimistic.
If the general opinion is pessimistic, fantasy is going to hold its own.
I don't like being pessimistic. I don't like living my life with a nihilistic mindset.
To describe someone as a pessimist is to issue an insult, whereas to be labelled an optimist is to get a pat on the back. To dismiss someone's argument as pessimistic is to suggest it is the product of a personality disorder, rather than careful analysis.
There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.
I'm deeply in love with my wife, and she's my best friend, and yet we share different viewpoints of life, which I think is one of the things that holds our marriage together. She came from Texas, and she has an optimistic view of life. I came from Detroit and have a very pessimistic view.
If you're not being pessimistic, you're not being very realistic. But I think one must always have hope, and when you have children, of course, you have no choice but to work your tail off to try and protect the future for your children. And that is infused by hope in the end.
Sorrow ages you prematurely. When you're in emotional debt, you're pessimistic about the future and, even in your green years, long to return to the past to remedy the shortfalls of love and opportunity you suffered.
I'm one of the more pessimistic cats on the planet. I make Van Gogh look like a rodeo clown.
From 8 A.M. until noon, I am pessimistic. Then from 1 P.M. until 4, I feel optimistic.
I have friends who are very pessimistic. They say you can't possibly be an optimist nowadays. But I think, taking the longer view, you can still be as optimistic as you want.
I'm generally pessimistic about the dumbing down of America - especially with summer movies.
In the current climate, we live in a pessimistic and non-idealistic world.
When I do look at myself, I see someone who is fundamentally optimistic. Quite a lot of what I do in my television work involves the less than pleasant aspects of human nature, yet I'm never pessimistic.
A conservative government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic; reformism is basically optimistic.
Negative and pessimistic views of technology have always existed. I can just imagine some pessimistic Sumerian in 3500 B.C. screaming about the evils of the wheel.
Some people say my work is often depressing and pessimistic, with the emphasis on death, blood, overcrowding, strange beings and so on, but I don't really think it is.
I'm pessimistic. I don't think that justice always gets the right person.
It is a nonsense to me when people come along and tell me not to be pessimistic; or that culture has always been going to the bad. Well, yes, it has, and it is an author's job to point it out.
Clinically speaking, depression is a pessimistic sense of your own capabilities, and despondent lack of energy.
It takes a certain amount of courage to not be pessimistic. I'd like to believe there is good in everyone.
If everything always went perfectly, I would feel like, When is the ball going to drop? Because good things don't always last. Maybe I'm a pessimistic person. When something just seems too good, I can't believe it.
Twenty years ago, you might have been pessimistic and said there's no hope. But these days, some of our very biggest companies are acting remarkably cleanly. And in some cases, although not all cases, the CEOs are the driving forces behind that.
I am sort of pessimistic in that way where I often think the worst of people.
On one hand, I am very pessimistic, but on the other hand, if I didn't believe that speaking up would do something, I wouldn't have spoken.
I tend to be pessimistic about everything: If things seem to be going good, I'm worried that it's going to end; if things are bad, then I'm worried that it's going to be permanent. It's not a very comfortable attitude to have all the time.
Mexicans are deeply pessimistic that Simpson-Mazzoli can be enforced.
