Quotes about Pessimism

I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is.

"I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane." "It never is, sir." "Lane, you're a perfect pessimist." "I do my best to give satisfaction, sir."

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

Winners see an answer for every problem; losers see a problem in every answer!

Even worse, they want to drag others down into their tomb. If you're hopeful and ambitious, they'll try to convince you your ideas are impossible. They'll say you're wasting your time.

Don't bother. The glass is half-empty.

Worriers are visionaries minus the optimism.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... The truly wise person is color- blind.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while the pessimist sees only the red stoplight. The truly wise person is colorblind.

Churches can become places of cynicism, resistance, and pessimism.

The consistent optimism of our liberal culture has prevented modern democratic societies both from gauging the perils of freedom accurately and from appreciating democracy fully as the only alternative to injustice and oppression. When this optimism is not qualified to accord with the real and complex facts of human nature and history, there is always a danger that sentimentality will give way to despair and that a too consistent optimism will alternate with a too consistent pessimism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882), the great American essayist, said "nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm." What a deconstructed culture lacks, because of its deep cynicism and pessimism about reality, is a basic confidence and enthusiasm that is necessary to start almost anything.