Top 100 A Pessimist Quotes
#1. A pessimist asked God for relief. Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness, said God. No, replied the petitioner, I wish you to create something that would justify them. The world is all created,said God, but you have overlooked something
Ambrose Bierce
#2. The pessimist has to invent new reasons to exist every day: he is a victim of the "meaning" of life.
Emil M. Cioran
#3. That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.
James Jones
#4. Many an optimist has become rich simply by buying out a pessimist.
Laurence J. Peter
#5. A pessimist is a person who is always right but doesn't get any enjoyment out of it, while an optimist, is one who imagines that the future is uncertain. It is a duty to be an optimist, because if you imagine that the future is uncertain, then you mu
Victor Cherbuliez
#6. I'm a pessimist by nature. I don't think things are ever going to work out, I'm not particularly ambitious.
Diablo Cody
#7. A pessimist sees the darkness around the light, but an optimist looks for the light in the darkness.
Debasish Mridha
#8. I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good.
John Corey Whaley
#9. I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.
William Golding
#10. Actually he was a pessimist, and, like all pessimists, a ridiculously unobservant man.
Vladimir Nabokov
#11. Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#12. I'm not a pessimist by nature. I'm not someone who sees things in a bleak way.
Nouriel Roubini
#13. But it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation to the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist.
Charles Williams
#14. I've turned over a new leaf. On TV, Kenny Wallace said I was a pessimist after Charlotte, so I got mad. Now I am so excited about coming back that I just can't stand it. I wish we were starting tomorrow and I'm going to win! That's the new me.
Mark Martin
#15. You're the optimist all the way through, pretending to be a pessimist on the inside, because you can act like it hurts less if you say you knew all along it was going to go down like that.
Amy Jo Cousins
#16. I guess I'm a hopeful optimist, because to be a pessimist is to be suicidal.
Peter Benchley
#17. [A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.
Rex Stout
#18. An optimist is someone who thinks that on planet number five the history of mankind will be less bloody. A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise.
Milan Kundera
#20. On one hand, I'm an optimistic pessimist. On the other, I'm a pessimistic optimist. But while there's life, there's still hope, and I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I didn't think there was still hope.
Helen Caldicott
#21. I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.
Jacques Barzun
#22. An optimist is presented with a problem and sees an opportunity. A pessimist is presented with an opportunity and sees a problem.
Harry S. Truman
#23. Wyndham Lewis is basically a pessimist, thinking of human beings as doomed animals or determinist machines. His theory of satire is based on this view, and he finds plenty of evidence to support it in contemporary practice.
Louis MacNeice
#24. I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
Lesslie Newbigin
#25. An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to.
Laurence J. Peter
#27. When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice, Amos
Michael Lewis
#28. Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist - a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist - only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression.
Emil Cioran
#29. It is not at all polite to point out a crusty old pessimist's dark inner secret.
Brandon Sanderson
#30. The optimist sees the doughnut but the pessimist see 452 calories and a shed load of sugar ...
James Minter
#31. To a pessimist, losing bobby pins is as hopeless as losing hair.
To an optimist, losing hair gives hope to get the lost bobby pins back.
Munia Khan
#32. Don't ever become a pessimist ... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.
Robert A. Heinlein
#33. A pessimist is someone who has forgotten the joy of beginning.
Marty Rubin
#34. I will be the first to admit that I am a pessimist by nature. It is, after all, the wisest way to be. We pessimists have everything to gain, whereas optimists have a fifty-fifty chance of being disappointed.
Tamar Myers
#35. I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.
Nick Cave
#36. An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old one leaves.
Bill Vaughan
#37. I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.
Will Harvey
#38. A pessimist is overwhelmed by the existential sufferings of life, he has no time to see the beauty and possibilities of life.
Debasish Mridha
#39. I assure you I am as optimistic as a pessimist can be."-Fletcher
Tim McGiven
#40. I'm not a pessimist, even though I do think awful things are going to happen.
James Lovelock
#41. People, particularly over-moralistic Americans, have often seen me as a pessimist and humourless to boot, yet I think I have an almost maniacal sense of humour. The problem is that it's rather deadpan.
J.G. Ballard
#42. One of the more serious temptations which stifles boldness and zeal is a defeatism, which turns us into querulous and disillusioned pessimists, sourpusses.
Pope Francis
#43. The the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hope are optimistic.
Albert Schweitzer
#44. Some of my cronies call me a pessimist and a decadent, but there is always a background of faith behind resignation.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
#46. A pessimist? That's a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.
Elbert Hubbard
#47. I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?
Eugenio Montale
#48. Sometimes it's not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you and know, absolutely know, that the sound in the dark is a monster, and it really is as bad as you think.
Did that sound hopeless? It didn't feel hopeless. It felt reassuring. It felt - real.
Laurell K. Hamilton
#49. Scratch a pessimist and you will often find a defender of privilege.
William Beveridge
#50. I'm a pessimist, so I find everything limiting.
Grumpy Cat
#51. I'm a pessimist by nature, so I don't believe something until someone has kind of punched me over the head with it.
Theo James
#52. A pessimist looks at his glass and says it is half empty; an optimist looks at it and says it is half full.
Josiah Stamp
#53. You control an unruly dog with a chain ... or a cage. Never underestimate fear" - Heinrich gestured angrily at Roosevelt - "or the men who would capitalize on it to get what they want." "You are such a pessimist. This is America. Nothing like that could ever happen here.
Larry Correia
#54. Many say "What goes up must come down." I believe this was spoken by a pessimist. I believe it is vitally important to remember that "What goes up ... must have started some place." #workhard
Jayce O'Neal
#55. It is much more sensible to be an optimist instead of a pessimist, for if one is doomed to disappointment, why experience it in advance?
Elizabeth Peters
#56. I'm a technological optimist in that I do believe that technology will provide solutions that will allow the world in 2050 to support 9 billion people at an acceptable standard of living. But I'm a political pessimist in that I am concerned about whether the science will be appropriately applied.
Martin Rees
#57. I don't think I'm a total pessimist, so I think you can find hope in all my films.
Spike Lee
#58. A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
Elbert Hubbard
#59. I'm a pessimist, but I have many painstakingly applied coats of optimism.
George Meyer
#60. Many an optimist has become rich by buying out a pessimist.
Robert G. Allen
#61. If we don't change from a world society that worships money and power to one that worships compassion and generosity, I think we'll be extinct by mid-century. I don't say that as an alarmist or as a pessimist.
Patch Adams
#62. The first line in the first 'Gasland' is: 'I'm not a pessimist. I've always had a great deal of faith in people that we won't succumb to frenzy or rage or greed. That we'll figure out a solution without destroying the things that we love.' I have not lost that sense.
Josh Fox
#63. A pessimist finds the darkness around the light but an optimist becomes the light in the darkness.
Debasish Mridha
#64. Believe. No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted island, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
Helen Keller
#65. I am not a pessimist, but I am not an optimist about the future of American democracy.
David Souter
#66. You know, you have to be an optimist, a pessimist, sarcastic and pleasant all at the same time to be a photographer.
Rondal Partridge
#67. I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.
Henry Adams
#68. I'm a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, ... an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.
Octavia E. Butler
#69. Obviously, you can't control everything, but you are obliged to take care of the few things you can. I'm an optimist, basically, who acts like a pessimist. On principle. Just in case.
Russell Banks
#70. I personally don't think of myself as either an optimist or a pessimist.
Nick Bostrom
#71. The pessimist may call the optimist a fool; but who is more foolish, the happy individual who expects more happiness or the one who fills his life with bitterness and has only more despair to look forward to?
Wayne Gerard Trotman
#72. I don't want to be a pessimist. I'm a realist. One man's realist is another man's pessimist.
Bill Maher
#73. No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
Helen Keller
#74. I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.
Leonard Cohen
#75. A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#76. No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.
William Ralph Inge
#77. More cruelly: he feared her faith because, as a fully paid-up pessimist, he knew he had none.
John Le Carre
#78. All I have is intuition and a little hope." "Don't be such a pessimist. You've also got two tires, two garbage bags, and a hollow spindle.
Stephen King
#79. I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.
Albert Einstein
#80. Some people are optimists. Some people are pessimists. I'm just a realist who believes that some things are worth fighting for.
C. JoyBell C.
#81. Nothing of any importance has ever been accomplished by a pessimist.
Jack Welch
#82. Jerome. May I see you in my cabin? Just for a few minutes?"
"A few minutes?" Jerome grinned. "Tsk, Ezri, when did you become such a pessimist?"
"Now," she said, wiping the smile from his face. Chagrined, he helped her to her feet.
Scott Lynch
#83. I'm a bit of a pessimist, oh yeah, and I always think the film I'm about to make is going to be a disaster.
Lenny Abrahamson
#84. When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It's all a matter of perspective.
Harvey MacKay
#85. I'm a pessimist about the euro, but not about Europe. So the southern periphery, Spain, Italy, Greece, leave - Italy might be the first to go - and the rest stay. That will work just fine. But unless they want to give up democracy, I don't see greater fiscal union as the answer.
Tyler Cowen
#86. For an optimist the glass is half full, for a pessimist it's half empty.And for an Engineer it is twice
bigger than necessary.
Sudeep Nagarkar
#87. I'm sort of a pessimist about tomorrow and an optimist about the day after tomorrow.
Eric Sevareid
#88. A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.
Harry Truman
#89. I sometimes say I am a 'happiness optimist' but a 'revenue pessimist.'
Tyler Cowen
#91. I am not a pessimist.
Just a well informed optimist.
Antonio Gala
#92. There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
Mark Twain
#93. People say I'm such a pessimist, but I always was. It never stopped me from doing what I had to do. I would say I'm a realist.
Joan Baez
#94. Are you ever not a pessimist?"
"Sometimes. But then I wake up.
Mira Grant
#95. You know you're a pessimist when you win an Oscar and think, "Oh God, I've peaked.
Cate Blanchett
#97. Scratch a pessimist and you find often a defender of privilege.
William Beveridge
#98. An optimist looks at a seed and sees a tree;
a pessimist looks at a tree and sees a forest fire.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#99. I'm an optimist in my heart - I'm a hopeless pollyanna just like my mother - but a pessimist in my head. I think that's the dialectic we all need to be in.
Bill Ayers
#100. I'm not a pessimist at all, but I'm not an optimist, either.
Nate Lowman
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