Famous Quotes & Sayings

Salman Rushdie

optimism is a disease

Robert Louis Stevenson

We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed that not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun.

Sarah Dessen

He'd always had that fearless optimism that made cynics like me squirm. I wondered if it was enough for both of us. I would never know from here, though. And time was passing. Crucial minutes and seconds, each one capable of changing everything.

William Arthur Ward

Optimism is a seed sown in the soil of faith; pessimism is a seed hoarded in the vault of doubt.

Samuel Johnson

No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.

Joseph Addison

I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.

John Irving

He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.

John Hench

I always admired Walt's optimism. He seemed to know the direction he was going to. When I was at the studio, I remember he kept driving all of us back down to a more fundamental level all the time.

John F. Kerry

The hope is there. The sun is rising. Our best days are yet to come.

My optimism for life carried through my work.

Edward Teller

I am guilty of the great crime of optimism.

Henry Ward Beecher

The greatest architect and the one most needed is hope.

Jim Leach

There's probably a little greater case for pessimism than optimism. But I do not rule out optimism.

There's a lot of optimism that this stimulus is going to work.

There's a lot of optimism in the sector and not a lot of pessimism.

Alan Greenspan

Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.

Alan Greenspan

History demonstrates that participants in financial markets are susceptible to waves of optimism. Excessive optimism shows the seeds of its own reversal in the form of imbalances that tend to grow over time.

Chogyam Trungpa

The courage to work with ourselves comes as basic trust in ourselves, as a sort of fundamental optimism.

Arnold Bennett

Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.

Madeleine Albright

What distinguishes Americans from many people in the world is our kind of endemic optimism.

Madeleine Albright

I am by nature a worried optimist ...

Cesar Pelli

Construction is a matter of optimism; its a matter of facing the future with confidence.

Bob Iger

What I've really learned over time is that optimism is a very, very important part of leadership.

Bill Gates

If we have optimism without empathy then it doesn't matter how much we master the secrets of science. We're not really solving problems, we're just working on puzzles.

Cameron Crowe

Optimism is a revolutionary act

Aung San Suu Kyi

If I advocate cautious optimism it is not because I do not have faith in the future but because I do not want to encourage blind faith.

Denis Hayes

I suppose I'd characterize myself as having a faith-based optimism. My faith is parental and Darwinian.

Antonio Gramsci

Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.

Bruce Lee

Optimism is a faith that leads to success.

Drew Houston

One misconception is that entrepreneurs love risk. Actually, we all want things to go as we expect. What you need is a blind optimism and a tolerance for uncertainty.

Chuck Palahniuk

Optimism is the first symptom that any disease is fatal.

Daniel Kahneman

When action is needed, optimism, even of the mildly delusional variety, may be a good thing.

Conor Oberst

There's a lot of optimism in changing scenery, in seeing what's down the road.