Quotes About Pessimism

A lot of people respond to almost any achievement, positive development, or outright victory with yes but. Naysaying becomes a habit.

To say that the emperor has no clothes is a nice anti-authoritarian gesture, but to say that everything without exception is going straight to hell is not an alternative vision but only an inverted version of the mainstream's 'everything's fine.

Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It is the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.

In a low state of mind, everything seems really bad and worse than it probably is.

Much has been made about the death of the novel and the end of literature as it's seen to be assailed by technology, by the web, by the many and varied new forms of entertainment and culture. I don't share that pessimism because I think it is one of the great inventions of the human spirit.

In fact I thought life was pretty much a losing proposition, and I didn't mind saying so.

We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic. SUSAN JEFFERS

lethargic meliorist;

Pase lo que pase –escribió Flaubert cuando estalló la guerra franco-prusiana–, seguiremos siendo unos estúpidos.» ¿Simple pesimismo jactancioso? ¿O se trata de la necesaria aceleración de las expectativas, cuando aún no se puede pensar, actuar o escribir adecuadamente?

And in your opinion, the notion that everything works out in the end, and the counter-notion that nothing ever does, are both equally banal.

Mas o cinismo persistente deixa uma pessoa rabugenta e, em demasia, pode provocar estragos duradouros no nosso coração.

Ma o cinismo persistente deixa uma pessoa rabugenta e, em demasia, pode provocar estragos duradouros no nosso coração.

purely negative approach

although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time)

Must you always see the dark side of everything?' Julia said. 'Someone has to,' Jackson said. 'Yes, but does it have to be you?' Apparently, yes. It did.

Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.

Fear makes men believe the worst.

Against ill chances men are ever merry, But heaviness foreruns the good event.

The nature of man is evil; what is good in him is artificial.

Too much pessimism has led too many men into making serious mistakes. And perhaps part of our pessimism comes because we are too close to ourselves to see in proper perspective.

The pessimism of the creative person is not decadence but a mighty passion for the redemption of man.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

the most common type of pessimism is neither philosophical nor religious: it is the pessimism of thwarted desire. ... It is the cynical sneer of the man who, seeking roses, finds only ashes.

The conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another.