Optimism vs. Pessimism Quotes

If we talk about the glass being half empty or half full, I want to know what does the glass look like from underneath the table?

Are you a Tigger or an Eeyore?

The optimist says, ‘this is the best of all possible worlds.’ The pessimist considers that statement for a while and then says, ‘Yes, you are right.’

We need to quit arguing about whether the glass is half full or half empty - and instead acknowledge that there's not quite enough water to go around.

I grew up in the 1960s and wanted to become part of the great space exploration effort, but when I graduated from college in 1974, the Apollo program was over, and the country had moved into this pessimistic mode. We had entered the 'age of limits.'

When anybody goes to L.A. from London, there's always this slight sense of, 'What are you doing? Who do you think you are? It's never gonna happen.' It's the classic, good-natured British cynicism.

It has been my observation and experience, and that of my family, that nothing human works out well.

Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. So that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end. The people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world would become pessimists: the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimistic.

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

If you listen to Barack Obama, if you listen to Hillary Clinton, they're portraying Donald Trump as this deep, dark, dividing, dank presence that sees America as dwindling away and failing and everybody's in bad shape. They think they're the paragons of optimism.

If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.

Bostonians vs. Chicagoans, they have different sensibilities, and I can only say this because I consider myself a Bostonian. You know, the Puritanical roots in Boston - the 'sky is falling' mentality a little bit. We could be on a great run, and we'd lose one game, and everyone's panicking.

Utopias and dystopias can exist side by side, even in the same moment. Which one you're in depends entirely on your point of view.

A person is as young as their dreams and as old as their cynicism.

Fitzgerald said a very interesting thing in his diary; that human life proceeds from the good to the less good - that is, it's always worse as you go on. That's true.

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

Sooner or later, many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.

I oscillate between being cynical and being naive on a regular basis. I always think that not much shocks me until something much too obvious does.

Creeds matter very little... The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label.

It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed.