Optimist / Optimism - Quotes

A pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant surprises. - Rex Stout

Although optimism is the result of an illusion, it is a desirable distortion of reality. - Susan C. Vaughan

An optimist is like a kettle – up to its neck in hot water, and still whistling. - Unknown

An optimist is one who makes the best of it when he gets the worst of it. - Unknown

An optimist is the human personification of spring. - Susan J. Bissonette

Choose to be optimistic. It feels better. - Dalai Lama

Cultivate an optimistic mind, use your imagination, always consider alternatives, and dare to believe that you can make possible what others think is impossible. - Rodolfo Costa

Faith and optimism are contagious. - Thom S. Rainer

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. - Walt Disney

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door – or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present. - Rabindranath Tagore

It doesn’t hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later. - Lucimar Santos De Lima

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

Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself. - Lucille Ball

Like pride, blind optimism may go before a fall. - David G Myers

My optimism is grounded in two worlds, myself and what is about me. I demand that the world be good, and lo, it obeys. I proclaim the world good, and facts range themselves to prove my proclamation overwhelmingly true. - Helen Keller 

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself. - Lucille Ball

Optimism and pessimism are mere matters of optics, of how you look at things, and that can change from day to day, or with a new prescription for your glasses – or with a new set of ideological filters. - George Weigel

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 depends on seeing the self as full of the emotional stuff it takes to rise to challenges and weather life's storms. Optimists believe that they are robust, and this perspective in turn allows them to choose to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. How well and smoothly our emotional regulation works will determine how much of our daily lives we spend in this optimistic, comfortable state. The more time we spend in this state, the more we will look like an optimist. But appearing optimistic merely reflects the aggregate, the sum of those little oscillating moments of optimism and pessimism over time, not some stable, enduring, unshakable trait. And that's good news, because it means that even small shifts in our capacity for self-regulation can lead to large differences in how much of our day we spend in a comfortable, peaceful emotional state.- Susan C. Vaughan

Optimism inspires, energizes, and brings out our best. It points the mind toward possibilities and helps us think creatively past problems. - Price Pritchett 

Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you. - Unknown

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so. - Noam Chomsky

Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress. - Nicholas M. Butler

Optimism is life – Pessimism, slow suicide. - William Crosbie Hunter

Optimism is not the result of blinding oneself to problems, but of always believing there is a solution. - Unknown

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. - Helen Keller

Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow. - Seth Godin

Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than any other. - Brian Tracy

Optimism refuses to believe that the road ends without options. - Robert H. Schuller

Optimism will grow like a flower if the soil be properly prepared. - Arthur Lynch

Optimism works in conjunction with your life energy, strengthening your roots and keeping you grounded, stimulating the growth of new shoots and the development of new branches that form your life, energizing the creation that is you. - Dana Lightman

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, unaccompanied by personal effort, is merely a state of mind and not fruitful. - Unknown

Optimism. It's not just a mind-set, it is behaviour. - Larry Elder

Optimists don't internalize pain or criticism. They take it for what it is worth and carry on. - Robert Sherfield

Optimists find joy in small things. They enjoy sunsets, a good conversation with a close friend; and they enjoy life in general. They are more concerned with having many small joys rather than having one huge joy. - Robert M. Sherfield

Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death. - Nelson Mandela

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

Protracted optimism must eventually end in hopeless fatuity. - Abraham Miller

Put on the glasses of optimism and you will see a world of potential. - Unknown

Some people argue against both optimism and pessimism in favour of so-called realistic thinking. They distrust optimism on the grounds that it causes us to sugar-coat problems, discount risks, and exaggerate the upside. Pessimism, on the other hand, is criticized as too downbeat, de-energizing, and generally damaging in its impact. This crown prefers realism as the neutral and objective middle ground. - Price Pritchett

Stick with the optimists. It’s going to be tough enough even if they’re right. - James Reston

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The genial optimist who praises much scatters flowers in our way. Grant that he over-praises, or that he applauds where he might condemn, still he makes – no mean result – the world to appear better than it is. A pleasant illusion is better than a harsh reality. - Christian Nestell Bovee

The positive outlook that optimists project does not come from ignoring or denying problems. Optimists simply assume that problems are temporary and can be solved, so optimists naturally want more information about problems because then they can get to work and do something. Pessimists are more likely to believe that there is nothing they can do anyway, so what's the point of even thinking about it? - Rosabeth Moss Kanter

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

The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy. - Helen Keller

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

There is abundant reason to believe that optimism – big, little, and in between – is useful to a person because positive expectations can be self-fulfilling. - Christopher Peterson

Unsatisfied desire is the characteristic feature of human life. That is the common fact out of which both pessimism and optimism are constructed. Dwell on the impossibility of ever getting a state of complete and permanent satisfaction with what you have, and you become a pessimist. Dwell on the opportunity for endless growth and conquest which this same fact makes possible, and you become an optimist. - William Dewitt Hyde

We should cultivate the optimistic temperament, and endeavour to see the good that dwells in everything. If we sit down and lament over the imperfection of our bodies and our minds, we profit nothing; it is the heroic endeavour to subdue adverse circumstances that carries our spirit upward. - Vivekananda