Pessimist Quotes - page 2

A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street. (Laurence J. Peter)
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. View quote
J. G. Ballard
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. View quote
Karel Appel
I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
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. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The pessimist has to invent new reasons to exist every day: he is a victim of the "meaning" of life. View quote
Emil Cioran
I think I'm a realist. Which people who don't like me consider to be pessimism. It isn't pessimism at all. If I was a pessimist I wouldn't get up, I wouldn't shave, I wouldn't watch Batman at 7:30 a. m. Pessimists just don't do that sort of thing. View quote
Morrissey
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. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
I never considered myself a lucky person. I'm the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am. View quote
Christopher Nolan
I'm a pessimist. But I'm a pessimist with a sense of responsibility. (Maynard James Keenan)
[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant. View quote
Rex Stout
Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the world at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world. View quote
Helen Keller
I'm a pessimist about probabilities, I'm an optimist about possibilities. View quote
Lewis Mumford
The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose. View quote
Kahlil Gibran
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. View quote
Christian D. Larson
No one knows enough to be a pessimist. View quote
Wayne W. Dyer
A French critic referred to me as a gay pessimist, with gay used in its older sense, and talked of Cocteau in the same breath. View quote
Peter Greenaway
I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist. View quote
Jacques Barzun
The difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh. View quote
Tom Bodett
I can be a real pessimist. You know that when you win an Oscar, and you walk offstage, and your first thought is: 'Oh God, I've peaked.' (Cate Blanchett)
I am so far from being a pessimist... on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life. View quote
Eugene O'Neill
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? View quote
Eugenio Montale
Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information. View quote
Idries Shah
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? View quote
Elizabeth Peters