Top 100 A Pessimist Quotes
#1. Unsure of what I was. An optimist? A pessimist?
Neither. A fool.
Jay Asher
#2. 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
#3. I have always had a passion for the beautiful. If the man in me is often a pessimist, the artist, on the contrary, is pre-eminently an optimist.
Jules Breton
#4. That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.
James Jones
#5. Many an optimist has become rich simply by buying out a pessimist.
Laurence J. Peter
#6. A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is one who hopes they are.
Chauncey Depew
#7. A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.
Oscar Wilde
#8. Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
Idries Shah
#9. I am such a pessimist that every project has surpassed what I envisioned.
Colin Mochrie
#10. I'm a pessimist by nature. A pot head, but a pessimist.
Bill Maher
#11. I try not to be too optimistic or pessimistic. If you're a pessimist then that's depressing all the time; if you're an optimist and things don't work out then that's depressing, too.
Nicholas Hoult
#12. I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.
A.E. Housman
#13. 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
#14. I'm a pessimist by nature. I don't think things are ever going to work out, I'm not particularly ambitious.
Diablo Cody
#15. A pessimist sees the darkness around the light, but an optimist looks for the light in the darkness.
Debasish Mridha
#16. I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good.
John Corey Whaley
#17. When opportunity knocks a pessimist dials 911;
when opportunity knocks an optimist sets the table.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#18. I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.
William Golding
#19. Man is brilliant at solving problems; but solving them only makes him the victim of his own childishness and laziness. It is this recognition that has made almost every major philosopher in history a pessimist.
Colin Wilson
#20. Actually he was a pessimist, and, like all pessimists, a ridiculously unobservant man.
Vladimir Nabokov
#21. If I'm going to be a pessimist, then I should just stop writing for young people because that's too heavy a burden to put on young readers. But also, I get to meet with people who have waded through horrible things, and they get up every morning, and they try to do their best.
Deborah Ellis
#22. The believer is neither a pessimist nor an optimist. To be either is illusory. The believer sees reality not in a certain light but as it is, and believes only in God and God's power towards all and over all that is seen. (in No Rusty Swords)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#23. 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
#24. In the Soviet Union we have a saying, a pessimist is someone who believes things can't get any worse. An optimist thinks maybe they can.
Abel Aganbegyan
#25. I'm not a pessimist by nature. I'm not someone who sees things in a bleak way.
Nouriel Roubini
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. I guess I'm a hopeful optimist, because to be a pessimist is to be suicidal.
Peter Benchley
#29. He who thinks all mankind is vile is a pessimist who mistakes his introspection for observation; he looks into his own heart and thinks he sees the world.
William George Jordan
#30. An optimist sees the miracles and beauty of life and a pessimist sees the sufferings and wonders, where is the life?
Debasish Mridha
#31. The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.
Mark Twain
#32. [A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.
Rex Stout
#33. 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
#34. I vehemently deny that I was born a cynic and a pessimist.
J. Paul Getty
#36. A pessimist doesn't see the sunset outside, he sees the dirt on the window.
Jim Rohn
#37. 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
#38. For an optimist, life is full of opportunity. For a pessimist, life is full of adversity. Life is what you think of it.
Debasish Mridha
#39. 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
#40. I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
Lesslie Newbigin
#41. It's better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right
Mark Twain
#42. An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to.
Laurence J. Peter
#43. When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice, Amos
Michael Lewis
#44. 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
#45. Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.
Oscar Wilde
#46. 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
#47. A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
George Bernard Shaw
#48. 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
#49. I'm a pessimist about probabilities; I'm an optimist about possibilities.
Lewis Mumford
#50. A pessimist is someone who has forgotten the joy of beginning.
Marty Rubin
#51. 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
#53. I'm a pessimist by nature, so it's always the worst things that come to mind first whenever you make a decision or have a decision to make.
Domhnall Gleeson
#54. Know what an optimist is, Major? A pessimist without much experience.
Nicholas Proffitt
#56. A pessimist is just an optimist with experience.
Eyedea
#57. 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
#58. I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.
Will Harvey
#59. I happen to be a pessimist, and maybe that's a good thing because I don't stop to smell the roses - which is not a good personal thing. I don't stop and enjoy those moments ... Always on to the next and never in the moment.
Nicki Minaj
#60. A pessimist is overwhelmed by the existential sufferings of life, he has no time to see the beauty and possibilities of life.
Debasish Mridha
#61. How can anyone be a pessimist in a world where we know so little?
Wayne W. Dyer
#62. I assure you I am as optimistic as a pessimist can be."-Fletcher
Tim McGiven
#63. A regret understood by no one: the regret to be a pessimist. It's not easy to be on the wrong foot with life
Emile M. Cioran
#64. I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.
Roberto Rossellini
#65. I'm not a pessimist, even though I do think awful things are going to happen.
James Lovelock
#66. One can be a pessimist in thought but not in action.
Marty Rubin
#67. 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
#68. In my next life I want to be a pessimist. Then other people could spend all their time cheering me up.
Katharine Whitehorn
#69. 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
#70. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston S. Churchill
#71. Some of my cronies call me a pessimist and a decadent, but there is always a background of faith behind resignation.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
#73. There is a very thin line of difference between a Pessimist and a Perfectionist. Both are scared to fail, strive for ideal but the only think unlike in the two is- Pessimist thinks it will last forever and Perfectionist knows it won't.
Jasleen Kaur Gumber
#74. A pessimist? That's a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.
Elbert Hubbard
#75. 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
#76. I am so far from being a pessimist ... on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life.
Eugene O'Neill
#77. An optimist sees a failure as an opportunity to excel, but a pessimist sees a failure as an opportunity to quit.
Debasish Mridha
#78. Scratch a pessimist and you will often find a defender of privilege.
William Beveridge
#79. I'm a pessimist, so I find everything limiting.
Grumpy Cat
#80. 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
#81. To be a prophet it is sufficient to be a pessimist.
Elsa Triolet
#82. It is most important in creative science not to give up. If you are an optimist you will be willing to "try" more than if you are a pessimist.
Stanislaw Ulam
#83. People who don't know me think I'm easy-going, but I'm a pessimist by nature and an old curmudgeon.
James Garner
#84. Our notion of an optimist is a man who knowing that each year was worse than the preceding, thinks next year will be better. And a pessimist is a man who knows the next year can't be worse than the last one.
Franklin P. Adams
#85. I'd rather be a pessimist because then I can only be pleasantly surprised.
Benjamin Franklin
#86. 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
#87. I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I am a dyed-in-the-woo l possibilist! By this, I mean with an eco-mind, we see that everything's connected and change is the only constant.
Frances Moore Lappe
#88. 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
#89. A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.
Don Marquis
#90. A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.
Laurence J. Peter
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist is a man who looks after your feet.
G.K. Chesterton
#94. There's an old line that goes like this: An optimist is usually happy. And a pessimist is usually right. Maybe so. But which would you rather be, anyway?
Joe Posnanski
#96. A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
Elbert Hubbard
#97. I'm not a pessimist. Maybe I don't have a primitive feeling of happiness, that is true. Sometimes my color is happy but not the expression.
Karel Appel
#98. I'm a pessimist, but I have many painstakingly applied coats of optimism.
George Meyer
#99. Many an optimist has become rich by buying out a pessimist.
Robert G. Allen
#100. After 5,000 years of recorded human history, you wonder, what part of 2,000,000 sunrises doesn't a pessimist understand?
Robert Breault
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