Some of us cannot be optimists, but all of us can be bigamists
It's hard to argue against cynics - they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.
But America was built by optimists. Optimists like my friend Amanda, who recently started a small business. When she went to buy her website address-her first and last name-she found that someone already owned it, but wasn't using it. So my friend emailed the owner of the site to ask if she could buy it. The owner wrote back.
Optimists are right. So are pessimists. It's up to you to choose which you will be.
. . . the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation's destiny, by men willing to adventure, to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.
Pessimists see a problem behind every opportunity. Optimists see an opportunity behind every problem.
Optimists are happier in life for a reason.
Fighters have to be optimists.
Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present.
Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.
There would be a lot more optimists if it weren't for the rise-and-shine requierement.
Communists are the last optimists.
For optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better. For pessimists, there is no amount of happiness—should such a thing as happiness even obtain for human beings except as a misconception—that can compensate us for life’s hurt.
Christians should not be optimists; we know too much about sin. We should also not be pessimists, for we know the living God.
There are people who are wired to be skeptics and there are people who are wired to be optimists. And I can tell you, at least from the last 20 years, if you bet on the side of the optimists, generally you’re right.
The pessimist borrows trouble; the optimists lend encouragement.
Optimists are usually inexperienced.
Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.
Nuclear war is inevitable, says the pessimists; Nuclear war is impossible, says the optimists; Nuclear war is inevitable unless we make it impossible, says the realists.
The highest thinkers of the ages, the seers of the tribes and the nations, have been optimists.
