I think a certain degree of pessimism is actually helpful to love.
Alain de Botton
It fails everybody, pretty much, the American Dream, but people are driven by it. I don't think we're driven by the same sense of hope in Europe. We're driven by pessimism more.
Andrew Haigh
Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.
Antonio Gramsci
I believe passionately in preemptive pessimism, especially before a book comes out. I expect the worst both from reviewers and sales, and then, with any luck, I may be proved wrong.
Antony Beevor
Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.
Arnold Bennett
Pretty much any day is a good day to go to the ballpark, but that first day of the season is special. It's spring. The grass is green. Pessimism is impossible - at least, until the other team scores.
Ben Fountain
Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerves give to wisdom.
Bernard DeVoto
With the sole exception of President Bill Clinton, whose 'bridge to the 21st century' evoked the vision and optimism of other great Democratic presidents of the 20th century, such as FDR and John F. Kennedy, pessimism about America's economic future has been the hallmark of modern progressivism.
Bernard L. Schwartz
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
In securing the future of the planet, we secure happiness for ourselves. One of the aims of the Greens is to turn around the tide of pessimism amongst the young people of the world.
Bob Brown
Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire.
Bruce Springsteen
It is true that I am not one of those who laugh at utopias. The utopia of today can become the reality of tomorrow. Utopias are conceived by optimistic logic which regards constant social and political progress as the ultimate goal of human endeavor; pessimism would plunge a hopeless mankind into a fresh cataclysm.
Charles Albert Gobat
I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will.
Clint Eastwood
I just think there is so much irrational pessimism in the world.
Daniel Hannan
There is a real danger of unintended consequences, of encouraging people to give up. Pessimism, if it becomes a habit, can reinforce a narrative of unstoppable decline. If there is nothing we can do, that releases us from our obligations.
David Grinspoon
As long as we can imagine a better path, of course we are obligated to seek it. This is why unwarranted pessimism about our future is actually irresponsible.
Though there are many differences between Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, they are strikingly similar in their poor economic records and even more so in their shared pessimism and bearishness on America.
David Limbaugh
Whether we like it or not, there are moments in history when pessimism is the appropriate response.
David Olusoga
There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.
David Rakoff
I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.
Doris Lessing
Pessimism never won any battle.
My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
Sometimes pessimism or optimism gets popular, and it's contagious.
I definitely grew up on Garfield. I just loved his pessimism.
I'm a pessimist. But I think I'd describe my pessimism as broken-hearted optimism.
Pessimism is rife in Israel.
If only media people would stop reaching for the low-hanging fruit, which is cynicism and pessimism, and stopped trying so hard to be hip and cool and have a swagger.
The reason why there is more pessimism about technology in Europe has to do with history, the use of databases to keep track of people in the camps, ecological disasters.
I'd like very much to make a confident picture. I would like to be as good as nature, which, with a shower, produces flowers and grass to cover the destruction. But we are surrounded by human fragmentation, by pessimism, and it is difficult to talk of other things.
If pessimism is despair, optimism is cowardice and stupidity. Is there any need to choose between them?
Pessimism only describes an attitude, and not facts, and hence is entirely subjective.
Younger people have so many opportunities. I don't see any pessimism among them.
You know, the pessimism which exists now in the Middle East existed in Northern Ireland, but we stayed at it.
Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.
Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.
Criticism and pessimism destroy families, undermine institutions of all kinds, defeat nearly everyone, and spread a shroud of gloom over entire nations.
Pessimism doesn't grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.
I have never met an intelligent optimist. That is not to say I think pessimism makes you intelligent, but I have always felt like an Old Testament Jeremiah or Cassandra from ancient Greece. I want to run down the streets warning people.
One has to have the courage of one's pessimism.
Science fiction always has had strains of pessimism and optimism weaving through its historical development, sometimes one dominating and then the other, usually depending on the state of the world.
I reckon every player feels much the same on the eve of a Six Nations championship. We all want to finish top, win the title and do our respective countries proud in the process. We're also aware a lot of other people are seeking precisely the same thing. Pessimism and optimism collide like two ferrets in a sack.
Web 2.0 ideas have a chirpy, cheerful rhetoric to them, but I think they consistently express a profound pessimism about humans, human nature and the human future.
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.
Young people have a right to optimism, and rightly so; human beings have grown and developed and accomplished wonderful feats in the world. But what mires me in pessimism is the fact that so much of life is pain and sorrow and willful ignorance and violence, and pushing back against that tide takes so much effort, so much steady fight. It's tiring.
There's probably a little greater case for pessimism than optimism. But I do not rule out optimism.
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
I'm British; pessimism is my wheelhouse.
Both hope and pessimism are deeply contagious. And no one is more infectious than a leader.
Churches can become places of cynicism, resistance, and pessimism.
I first read Dostoyevsky when I was 14 years old and was entranced. Dostoyevsky truly is a writer for 14-year-olds, and I mean that in the most approving way - approving of his energy, and rage, his endless pessimism, and endless innocence.
