Quotes About Pessimism

Do you ever think you're being an idealist? Do you ever wonder if you're holding out for something that doesn't exist? I'm not being pessimistic, and although I'd like to believe that a boom or we or us exists, I'm not sure I do anymore. Maybe I've been holding out for something that's unrealistic.

I'm honest. It's the world that's awful - Sandor Clegane, The Hound. ASOIAF

It takes the same amount of energy to worry about the worst thing that can happen as it does to hope for the best. It's up to you to choose.

Optimists have a positive expectancy that helps them achieve their goals. Theirs is a can-do attitude. They take action, which is empowering. Pessimists take a passive attitude. They play the blame game or focus on what they can't do. As a result, pessimists often become victims of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Pervasiveness. Unlike pessimists who let their doubts and troubles affect every area of their lives, optimists are able to put their problems in a "box" and not let them distract them.

Expecting defeat will surely bring it

Me, I say too much optimism will get you killed.

Where hope rises fear must lurk behind.

We'll never truly be happy or safe, never. Never, ever.

I have never believed much in luck, and my sense of humor has tended to walk on the dark side.

There is a beautiful consistency about Buzzard; he is a porcupine among men, with his quills always flared. If he won a new car with a raffle ticket bought in his name by some momentary girlfriend, he would recognize it at once as a trick to con him out of a license fee. He would denounce the girl as a hired slut, beat up the raffle sponsor, and trade off the car for five hundred Seconals and a gold-handled cattle prod.

How would that constitute an ending? What service or hope or satisfaction could a reader draw from such an account? Who would want to believe that, except in the service of the bleakest realism? I couldn't do it to them. I'm too old, too frightened, too much in love with the shred of the life I have remaining. I no longer possess the lavage of my pessimism. When I am dead, and the Marshall's are dead, we will exist as my inventions.

Pessimism is too easy, even delicious, the badge and plume of intellectuals everywhere. It absolves the thinking classes of solutions. We

How would that constitute an ending? What serve or hope or satisfaction could a reader draw from such an account? Who would want to believe that, except in the service of the bleakest realism? I couldn't do it to them. I'm too old, too frightened, too much in love with the shred of the life I have remaining. I no longer possess the leverage of my pessimism. When I am dead, and the Marshalls are dead, we will exist as my inventions.

a sound principle being that nothing was ever as one imagined it, and this was an efficient means of excluding the worst.

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.

If I'm going to be a pessimist, then I should just stop writing for young people because that's too heavy a burden to put on young readers. But also, I get to meet with people who have waded through horrible things, and they get up every morning, and they try to do their best.

A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Cynicism stems from disappointment. Cynical and faithless people were not always like that. They were filled with possibilities and hope as kids. But they tried and perhaps failed.

The joys we expect are not so bright, nor the troubles so dark as we fancy they will be.

Americans are nervous; Americans are restless; and what troubles me the most is that Americans are uncharacteristically pessimistic.

I never considered myself a lucky person. I'm the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am.

Some see the glass half full, some see it half empty, and some see it crawling with toxic alien parasites who want to devour your pancreas.

If we consistently act on the optimistic hypothesis, this hypothesis will tend to be realised; whilst by acting on the pessimistic hypothesis we can keep ourselves for ever in the pit of want.