Top 100 The Pessimist Quotes
#1. Vision involves optimism and hope. The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.
J. Oswald Sanders
#2. The phenomenal thing that happened to me is that I was able to create two memorable men: one is the ultimate optimist, Rocky, and then you have Rambo, the ultimate pessimist. You're going to always be remembered for them, no matter what you do.
Sylvester Stallone
#3. The optimist pleasantly ponders how high his kite will fly; the pessimist woefully wonders how soon his kite will fall.
William Arthur Ward
#4. I never considered myself a lucky person. I'm the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am.
Christopher Nolan
#5. This is the picture of the spirit world. It is the world of the optimist. The pessimist has no share in its great glory, because he refuses to accept the possibility which is the nature of life. Thus he denies to himself all he desires, and even the possibility of achieving his desires.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. The pessimist has to invent new reasons to exist every day: he is a victim of the "meaning" of life.
Emil M. Cioran
#9. That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.
James Jones
#10. Briefly, then, life, to the pessimist, is a motiveless desire, a constant pain and continued struggle, followed by death, and so on, in secula seculorum, until the planet's crust crumbles to dust.
Edgar Saltus
#11. A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.
Oscar Wilde
#12. The pessimist focuses on the storm;
the optimist looks forward to the rainbow.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#13. An optimist is the man who looks after your eyes, and the pessimist the person who looks after your feet.
Ada Leverson
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
Woody Allen
#17. 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
#18. A pessimist sees the darkness around the light, but an optimist looks for the light in the darkness.
Debasish Mridha
#19. I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good.
John Corey Whaley
#20. Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.
George Bernard Shaw
#22. When opportunity knocks a pessimist dials 911;
when opportunity knocks an optimist sets the table.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. We did it!" I said, feeling limp with relief. "It actually worked!"
Dr. Turgenev rubbed his forehead. "I had very big doubts."
"Big doubts?" I said weakly.
The Russian scientist shrugged. "I am pessimist," he said.
Kenneth Oppel
#27. Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Oscar Wilde
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. Pessimist: The optimist who didn't arrive.
Mark Twain
#32. I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.
Peter Ustinov
#33. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
James Branch Cabell
#34. 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
#35. An optimist sees the miracles and beauty of life and a pessimist sees the sufferings and wonders, where is the life?
Debasish Mridha
#36. The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.
Agnes Repplier
#37. The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.
Mark Twain
#38. 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
#40. 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
#41. A pessimist doesn't see the sunset outside, he sees the dirt on the window.
Jim Rohn
#42. The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
#43. I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
Lesslie Newbigin
#44. The pessimist's credo, or one of them, is that nonexistence never hurt anyone and existence hurts everyone.
Thomas Ligotti
#45. When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice, Amos
Michael Lewis
#46. The pessimist can be enraged at wrong; but only the optimist can be surprised at it.
G.K. Chesterton
#47. When hearing a door creak, the optimist thinks it's opening and the pessimist thinks it's closing.
Matthieu Ricard
#48. It is not at all polite to point out a crusty old pessimist's dark inner secret.
Brandon Sanderson
#49. An optimist is merely an ex-pessimist with his pockets full of money, his digestion in good condition, and his wife in the country.
Helen Rowland
#50. The optimist sees the doughnut but the pessimist see 452 calories and a shed load of sugar ...
James Minter
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. The pessimist waits for better times, and expects to keep on waiting; the optimist goes to work with the best that is at hand now, and proceeds to create better times.
Christian D. Larson
#54. Rut, routine, robotic. These are the three R's of adult-hood. Wake up, eat, go to work, eat, work more, come home, eat, sleep, and repeat every day until we all reach retirement, or death.
Craig R. Key
#55. A pessimist is someone who has forgotten the joy of beginning.
Marty Rubin
#56. 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
#57. To the optimist all doors have handles and hinges; to the pessimist, all doors have locks and latches.
William Arthur Ward
#58. The world belongs to optimists; the pessimists are only spectators.
Francois Guizot
#59. Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better.
Martin Seligman
#60. In the long run, the pessimist may be proven right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.
Daniel Reardon
#61. The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
William Arthur Ward
#62. 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
#63. I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.
Nick Cave
#64. 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
#65. I think there's a lot of hope in my work. I don't think I'm a total pessimist, so I think you can find hope in all my films. Some more than others, but there's definitely ... I think we want to convey the feeling of hope with the montage at the end.
Spike Lee
#66. Call me a cockeyed pessimist, but I'm having trouble finding any good news in the trashing of Harriet Miers.
Ellen Goodman
#67. 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
#68. A pessimist is overwhelmed by the existential sufferings of life, he has no time to see the beauty and possibilities of life.
Debasish Mridha
#69. 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
#70. I'll tell you the difference between our countries. Americans think life is serious but not hopeless; the English that life is hopeless but not serious.
Amanda Craig
#71. 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
#72. Reciprocal illusions: the pessimist's fear and the optimist's hope.
Marty Rubin
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston S. Churchill
#76. 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
#77. Winston Churchill once quipped, "The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." He went on to say, "I am an optimist. It does not seem much use being anything else.
William Ury
#78. The optimist and the pessimist both die in the end, but each lives is life in a completely different way.
Paulo Coelho
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. The pessimist sees only the tunnel; the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel; the realist sees the tunnel and the light - and the next tunnel.
Sydney J. Harris
#82. I may be the optimist and you may be the Pessimist
but you can never put a puzzle together
with the two of the same pieces.
Austin V. Songer
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. 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
#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. An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
Rene Descartes
#89. The short-lived crash and burn of an eternal optimist is far more deeply felt than the day-to-day misery of an eternal pessimist.
Gregor Collins
#90. 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
#91. A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.
Laurence J. Peter
#92. I don't know if the optimists
or the pessimists are right.
But, the optimists are going to get something done.
Craig Venter
#93. Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!
Oscar Wilde
#94. my phone rings. I sense my hard-won optimism is about to get a smackdown. The Angel of Death, also known as my mother, Lenore Tate, long-suffering widow and professional pessimist.
Kristan Higgins
#95. 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
#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 realist all the way. I'm too cynical to be an optimist. But I've lived too much of a charmed life so far to ever be a pessimist.
Anthony Jeselnik
#99. You can discern the pessimist from the optimist by just looking at how people react to snow.
Iveta Cherneva
#100. 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
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