Quotes About Optimism

I choose one thing: always to have the laughter on my side.

Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the possible, that eye which everywhere, ever young, ever burning, sees possibility. Pleasure disappoints, not possibility.

Hope is passion for what is possible.

But Abraham believed, therefore he was young; for he who always hopes for the best becomes old, and he who is always prepared for the worst grows old early, but he who believes preserves an eternal youth.

What Rushdie took away from reading Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum]: Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping like sand, through our fingers.

his way of walking toward closed doors without slowing down, knowing they would open for him;

America, what happened to your optimism, your new frontiers, your simple Rockwell dreams? I'm plunging into your night, America, pushing myself deep into your heart like a knife, but the blade of my weapon is hope.

Life is a shit sandwich. The more bread you've got, the less shit you eat.

Mr. Eagle, you are not a realized man. That is your weakness and also your power. Before one realizes oneself one has the optimism of ignorance. It can be the saving of one's life. Once realized, one faces the terror of knowing what it is you are and have done...the realized man can have a profound effect on the world about him; he must bear the consequences, and guilt, of that as well...

Earthquakes, I point out, have always made men eager to placate the gods. After the great Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755—that catastrophe which Voltaire saw as an irrefutable argument for the tragic view of life and against Leibnizian optimism—the locals decided on a propitiatory auto-da-fé.

People called him paranoiac and he accepted the label. He had a whole theory of paranoia. I don't think he remembers that now. He said paranoia was to be understood as essentially optimistic, because the paranoid believed that there was a meaning to events, that the world made sense, even though that sense was concealed.

optimistically – get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning, and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might – as pessimists – give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway; things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos?

Faith is little more than the shadow cast by our hope for a better life.

I hope we've got a lot of fairways and greens. We'll go from there.

If you don't think like a winner, you're not going to be a winner.

I look forward to another good year next year. It would be nice to win, too.

I don't think we can win every game. Just the next one.

Even as a fierce competitor I try to smile.

When I stood up there as a pinch hitter, I honestly believed I was the best hitter in the game. That's the only attitude to have.

It is ok to err, but it is not ok to stop playing; it is ok to lose, but it is not ok to give up.

I think we'll be in pretty good shape. We've got the same car we ran in all the speedway races since 2001, and it's been a real good car for us. It's led every race we've been in.

The reason the pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can't see him laughing.

Enduring means accepting. Accepting things as they are and not as you would wish them to be, and then looking ahead, not behind.

We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.