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Quotations about optimism
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
People who have never really wielded power always have illusions about how much those who have power can really do.
Thomas Friedman (b. 1953) American journalist, columnist, author
From Beirut to Jerusalem, ch. 8 (1989)
(Source)
And however dark the skies may appear,
And however souls may blunder,
I tell you it all will work out clear,
For good lies over and under.Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) American author and poet.
“Insight,” An Erring Woman’s Love (1892)
(Source)
When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?
Chuck Palahniuk (b. 1962) American novelist and freelance journalist
Invisible Monsters (1999)
(Source)
Man is a victim of dope
In the incurable form of hope.Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet
“Good-bye, Old Year, You Oaf, or Why Don’t They Pay the Bonus?” (1935)
(Source)
Things never turn out either so well or so badly as they logically ought to do.
William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) English prelate [Dean Inge]
“The Future of the English Race,” Galton Lecture (1919), Outspoken Essays: First Series (1920)
(Source)
Be like the bird, who
Halting in his flight
On limb too slight
Feels it give way beneath him,
Yet sings
Knowing he hath wings.[Soyez comme l’oiseau, posé pour un instant
Sur des rameaux trop frêles,
Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant,
Sachant qu’il a des ailes!]Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
“In the Church of *** [Dans l’eglise de ***],” Songs of Dusk [Les chants du crepuscule], #33 sec. 6 (1836)
(Source)
Full French poem. Alternative translations:
- Be like the bird that, on a bough too frail
To bear him, gaily sings!
He carols -- thought he slender branches fail:
He knows that he has wings. [Source]- Be like the bird that seeks its short repose
And dauntless sings
Upon that bending twig, because it knows
That it has wings. [Source]- Be like that bird, that halting in her flight
A while on boughs too slight;
Feels them give way beneath her,
And yet sings, yet sings,
Knowing that she hath wings.
[Laura Sedgwick Collins 1890s song, "Be Like That Bird"]- Thou art like the bird
That alights and sings
Though the frail spray bends --
For he knows he has wings.[tr. Kemble (Butler)]
Every observation of history inspires a confidence that we shall not go far wrong; that things will mend.
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.
But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.
DRUMLIN: I know you must think this is all very unfair. Maybe that’s an understatement. What you don’t know is I agree. I wish the world was a place where fair was the bottom line, where the kind of idealism you showed at the hearing was rewarded, not taken advantage of. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world.
ARROWAY: Funny, I’ve always believed that the world is what we make of it.
While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he was sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.
By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.
One day I sat thinking, almost in despair; a hand fell on my shoulder and a voice said reassuringly: cheer up, things could get worse. So I cheered up and, sure enough, things got worse.
Hope for the best.
Expect the worst.
The world’s a stage.
We’re unrehearsed.
On a recent Sunday evening, Theo came up with an aphorism: the bigger you think, the crappier it looks. Asked to explain he said, “When we go on about the big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible, with nothing getting better, nothing to look forward to. But when I think small, closer in — you know, a girl I’ve just met, or this song we’re going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto — think small.”
There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask “What if I fall?”
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?
“Life is like a sewer — what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.” It’s always seemed to me that this is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need today in these trying times of crisis and universal brouhaha.
What was impossible yesterday is an accomplishment today — while tomorrow heralds the unbelievable.
Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.
If I should try to say anew the creed of the Optimist, I should say something like this: “I believe in God, I believe in Man, I believe in the power of the spirit, I believe we should so act that we may draw nearer and more near the age when no man shall live at his ease while another suffers.”
It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.
We [Americans] cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all, that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and that at the eleventh hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens.
When you face the sun, the shadows always fall behind you.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) Alsatian theologian, philosopher, physician, philanthropist
Out of My Life and Thought, An Autobiography, Epilogue (1933) [tr. Campion]
See also Gramsci.
When the skie falth we shall have Larkes.
[When the sky falls, we shall have larks.]
John Heywood (1497?-1580?) English playwright and epigrammist
Proverbes, Part 1, ch. 4 (1546)
(Source)
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.
Don’t ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun — and neither can stop the march of events.
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.