Pessimist Quotes

1. "Though anger seems a pessimistic response to a situation, it is at root a symptom of hope: the hope that the world can be better than it is. The man who shouts every time he loses his house keys is betraying a beautiful but rash faith in a universe in which keys never go astray. The woman who grows furious every time a politician breaks an election promise reveals a precariously utopian belief that elections do not involve deceit. The news shouldn't eliminate angry responses; but it should help us to be angry for the right reasons, to the right degree, for the right length of time – and as part of a constructive project. And whenever this isn't possible, then the news should help us with mourning the twisted nature of man and reconciling us to the difficulty of being able to imagine perfection while still not managing to secure it – for a range of stupid but nevertheless unbudgeable reasons."
Author: Alain De Botton

2. "My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become."
Author: Anne Rice

3. "I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will."
Author: Antonio Gramsci

4. "I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer - he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity."
Author: Bernard Malamud

5. "When I look at the world I'm pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic."
Author: Carl Rogers

6. "A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is one who hopes they are."
Author: Chauncey Depew

7. "Pessimistic" is a word for "realistic" that optimists use to make themselves feel better (about their unrealisticness)."
Author: Claire

8. "I write about adversity, I praise adversity, not to be pessimistic, but rather to strengthen myself. The more familiar that you are with it, the less likely you are to have a breakdown when it occurs. You become more reflective of its purpose, you understand God's reason for it, and are then able to make the best of everything that you are handed. The darkness is only frightening after constant sunshine."
Author: Criss Jami

9. "Never will I make that extra effort to live according to reality which alone makes good writing possible: hence the manic-depressiveness of my style,—which is either bright, cruel and superficial; or pessimistic; moth-eaten with self-pity"
Author: Cyril Connolly

10. "They too entered the world of dreams- that world in which a third of each man's life is spent, and which is thought by some pessimists to be a premonition of eternity."
Author: E.M. Forster

11. "I'm generally pessimistic about the dumbing down of America - especially with summer movies."
Author: Elmer Bernstein

12. "I'm sort of a pessimist about tomorrow and an optimist about the day after tomorrow."
Author: Eric Sevareid

13. "I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life."
Author: Eugene O'Neill

14. "Happy the creators of pessimistic systems! Besides taking refuge in the fact of having made something, they can exult in their explanation of universal suffering, and include themselves in it.I don't complain about the world. I don't protest in the name of the universe. I'm not a pessimist. I suffer and complain, but I don't know if suffering is the norm, nor do I know if it's human to suffer. Why should I care to know?I suffer, without knowing if I deserve to. (A hunted doe.)I'm not a pessimist. I'm sad."
Author: Fernando Pessoa

15. "O meu mundo não é como o dos outros, quero demais, exijo demais, há em mim uma sede de infinito, uma angústia constante que eu nem mesmo compreendo, pois estou longe de ser uma pessimista; sou antes uma exaltada, com uma alma intensa, violenta, atormentada, uma alma que se não sente bem onde está, que tem saudades... sei lá de quê!"
Author: Florbela Espanca

16. "Il n'y a pas d'art pessimiste… L'art affirme."
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

17. "When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress."
Author: G.K. Chesterton

18. "A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties."
Author: Harry S. Truman

19. "I need scarcely say that when I am off duty or on vacation I have little inclination to laugh: the cowhand is glad when he can forget the cow, the bricklayer when he can forget the mortar, and carpenters usually have doors at home which don't work or drawers which are hard to open. Confectioners like sour pickles, butchers like marzipan, and the baker prefers sausage to bread; bullfighters raise pigeons for a hobby, boxers turn pale when their children have nosebleeds: I find all this quite natural, for I never laugh off duty. I am a very solemn person, and people consider me - perhaps rightly so - a pessimist.("The Laugher")"
Author: Heinrich Böll

20. "I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist."
Author: Henry Adams

21. "An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before."
Author: Idries Shah

22. "The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true."
Author: J. Robert Oppenheimer

23. "Yet creeds mean very little, Coth answered the dark god, still speaking almost gently. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
Author: James Branch Cabell

24. "If everything always went perfectly, I would feel like, When is the ball going to drop? Because good things don't always last. Maybe I'm a pessimistic person. When something just seems too good, I can't believe it."
Author: January Jones

25. "People say I'm such a pessimist, but I always was. It never stopped me from doing what I had to do. I would say I'm a realist."
Author: Joan Baez

26. "In the 1970s, after the Damansky Island clashes, a joke began circulating: 'Optimists study English; pessimists study Chinese; and realists learn to use a Kalashnikov."
Author: John Vaillant

27. "You control an unruly dog with a chain . . . or a cage. Never underestimate fear"—Heinrich gestured angrily at Roosevelt—"or the men who would capitalize on it to get what they want." "You are such a pessimist. This is America. Nothing like that could ever happen here."
Author: Larry Correia

28. "Forgetting that beauty and happiness are only ever incarnated in an individual person, we replace them in our minds by a conventional pattern, a sort of average of all the different faces we have ever admired, all the different pleasures we have ever enjoyed, and thus carry about with us abstract images, which are lifeless and uninspiring because they lack the very quality that something new, something different from what is familiar, always possesses, and which is the quality inseparable from real beauty and happiness. So we make our pessimistic pronouncements on life, which we think are valid, in the belief that we have taken account of beauty and happiness, whereas we have actually omitted them from consideration, substituting for them synthetic compounds that contain nothing of them."
Author: Marcel Proust

29. "Le chagrin qui n'est nullement une conclusion pessimiste librement tirée d'un ensemble de circonstances funestes, mais la reviviscence intermittente et involontaire d'une impression spécifique, venue du dehors, et que nous n'avons pas choisie."
Author: Marcel Proust

30. "There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist."
Author: Mark Twain

31. "One can be a pessimist in thought, but not in action."
Author: Marty Rubin

32. "American actors are all muscular, tanned, white teeth and they have this indestructible confidence. We British are all... Dare I say it? Pessimistic."
Author: Max Irons

33. "If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed."
Author: Maya Angelou

34. "I try not to be too optimistic or pessimistic. If you're a pessimist then that's depressing all the time; if you're an optimist and things don't work out then that's depressing, too."
Author: Nicholas Hoult

35. "I'm not a pessimist by nature. I'm not someone who sees things in a bleak way."
Author: Nouriel Roubini

36. "The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole."
Author: Oscar Wilde

37. "I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool an optimist must know how sad a place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day."
Author: Peter Ustinov

38. "I'm a bad pessimist. I don't think about how successful any record I've ever done is going to do before it came out."
Author: Phil Anselmo

39. "The boys at school are so degenerate that it makes one feel pessimistic about the future of the male gender in general."
Author: Regina Doman

40. "Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance;...in which case, we should either-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?"
Author: Salman Rushdie

41. "It's easy to be pessimistic about tomorrow when today seems so bleak."
Author: Sarah Ban Breathnach

42. "Der Pessimist ist jemand, der vorzeitig die Wahrheit erzählt."
Author: Savinien Cyrano De Bergerac

43. "I tend to be one of those people who takes great pride in calling it like I see it. I say things like, "I'm not being grumpy or negative or pessimistic. I'm just keeping it real." "I'm not complaining. I'm just calling it like I see it." But people armed with a spirit of gratitude know that often it is what you call it. So what if, instead of calling it like we see it, we began to call it like God says it?"
Author: Steven Furtick

44. "The optimist says, "The glass is half full."The pessimist says, "The glass is half empty."The rationalist says, "This glass is twice as big as it needs to be."That makes it clear as glass."
Author: Thomas Cathcart

45. "But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn't making you stronger, they're making you weaker."
Author: Tim Ferriss

46. "The longer Ellen Cherry thought about it, the more convinced she became that the mission of the artist in an overtechnologized, overmasculinized society was to call the old magic back to life.Could it be done? Yeah, you pessimistic wimps, it could. Could she do it? Probably not, but she could give it a whirl."
Author: Tom Robbins

47. "People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist really is.An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that's out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.An idealist focuses only on the best aspects of all things (sometimes in detriment to reality); an optimist strives to find an effective solution. A pessimist sees limited or no choices in dark times; an optimist makes choices.When bobbing for apples, an idealist endlessly reaches for the best apple, a pessimist settles for the first one within reach, while an optimist drains the barrel, fishes out all the apples and makes pie.Annoying? Yes. But, oh-so tasty!"
Author: Vera Nazarian

48. "He who thinks all mankind is vile is a pessimist who mistakes his introspection for observation; he looks into his own heart and thinks he sees the world."
Author: William George Jordan

49. "No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism."
Author: William Ralph Inge

50. "Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?"
Author: Wole Soyinka

Pessimist Quotes Pictures