quotations about optimism
Two men look out through the same bars:
One sees the mud, and one the stars.
FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE
A Cluster of Quiet Thoughts
Optimism can be prescribed and applied as a medicine, and is a remedy in proportion to its purity and the wisdom displayed in its use.
HORACE FLETCHER
Optimism: A Real Remedy
Optimism, then, is a fact within my own heart. But as I look out upon life, my heart meets no contradiction. The outward world justifies my inward universe of good.
HELEN KELLER
Optimism: An Essay
Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
VOLTAIRE
Candide
Optimism will grow like a flower if the soil be properly prepared.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
It doesn't hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later.
LUCIMAR SANTOS DE LIMA
attributed, Words of Wellness
The predominant quality of successful people is optimism.... Your level of optimism is the very best predictor of how happy, healthy, wealthy, and long-lived you will be.
BRIAN TRACY
Focal Point
Optimism refuses to believe that the road ends without options.
ROBERT H. SCHULLER
Don't Throw Away Tomorrow
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
The Silver Stallion
Optimism is synonymous with Existence. The fundamental principle is to survive. Whatever persists is organically optimistic.
MEREDITH F. TITTERINGTON
"Is Optimism Irrational?", The Plebs Magazine, February 1910
Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive, because your words become your behavior.
Keep your behavior positive, because your behavior become your habits.
Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Open Your Mind, Open Your Life: A Book of Eastern Wisdom
Optimism has always seemed to me the cunning alibi of egoists, anxious to cover up their state of chronic self-satisfaction. They are optimists in order to avoid pitying other men and their misfortune.
GEORGES BERNANOS
A Diary of My Times
Pessimists see problems as stemming from stable and universal causes, thus making them less susceptible to corrective action. Optimists, in contrast, view problems as temporary and resulting from specific factors that will either change or be changed.
ROSABETH MOSS KANTER
Confidence
It's not that optimism solves all of life's problems; it is just that it can sometimes make the difference between coping and collapsing.
LUCY MACDONALD
Learn to Be an Optimist
For myself I am an optimist -- it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech, November 9, 1954
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
HENRY ROLLINS
attributed, Secrets of Happy People: 50 Techniques to Feel Good
The world we live in is a world of mingled good and evil. Whether it is chiefly good or chiefly bad depends on how we take it. To look at the world in such a way as to emphasize the evil is the art of pessimism. To look at it in such a way as to bring out the good, and throw the evil into the background, is the art of optimism. The facts are the same in either case. It is simply a question of perspective and emphasis.
WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE
The Art of Optimism
A spiritually optimistic point of view holds that the universe is woven out of a fabric of love. Everything that is happening is ultimately for the good if we're willing to face it head-on and use our adversities for soul growth.
JOAN BORYSENKO
Ensouling Ourselves
The future is open. It is not fixed in advance. So no one can predict it -- except by chance. The possibilities lying within the future, both good and bad, are boundless. When I say, 'Optimism is a duty', this means not only that the future is open but that we all help to decide it through what we do. We are all jointly responsible for what is to come.
KARL RAIMUND POPPER
All Life is Problem Solving
Optimism approves of everything, submits to everything, believes everything; it is the virtue above all of the taxpayer.
GEORGES BERNANOS
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