Pessimism Quotes - Page 3

A pessimist is one who has been compelled to live with an optimist.

No, you pessimistic fool, I am saying that if we can find it in ourselves to be miserable even when things are actually pretty good then there should be no difficulty being happy even when there is gloom and doom all around us.

We’re programmed to imagine bad things happening to us, as opposed to good things, even if the good are more likely. It’s kind of a protective pessimism: if we worry about the worst happening, it may miss our door.

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.

We're living among infinite possibilities. And the prevalent philosophies of post-modernist pessimism that come out of the universities are really a major tragedy. The opportunities for progress and change… are absolutely tremendous. Anybody who tells you that we're running out of resources or in a terrible mess--they are idiots. We can't run out of resources. Resources exist when the human mind sees how to use something. To say we are running out of resources is like saying we are running out of brain cells.

Life is short unless agony is long.

To a great extent in spiritual things we get what we expect of the Lord. Faith alone can bring us to see Jesus.

There is a budding morrow in midnight.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

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.

The world gets better every day - then worse again in the evening.

There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.

Sorrow spares no one, and scars respect no person.

We have reached the end of one era, and now we don't know what is all around us. Because we're already in a new era, and it is very different from the old one. Science and the world of technology are both changing everything so quickly, even our bodies. So the original ancient culture was present here, but to no avail, at this point in history it has come to stop. It still has some effect, some kind of continuity, but it cannot analyse and reformulate things, it cannot impact things with absolute strength. The age to follow will be full of dangers. It will be full of difficulties. In all likelihood, it will not be a good future for mankind. It is even possible this new era will mean the end of mankind.

You predicted quick victory. Now it’s going to get hopelessly complicated. Jesus, don’t you know any better than that by now?

If we can cease envisaging ourselves as metaphorical foetuses, and substitute the image of a newborn child, then that will be at least a small intellectual advance. In time, perhaps, we may even learn to toddle.

Almost anything at all can be transmuted into a labyrinth.

– The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth’s is a pond and a backwater.– The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?– But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.– Know yourselves – be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.

One cloud is enough to eclipse all the sun.

Don't degrade your soul to the extent of believing in curses. No man can curse you except your maker.

Youth believes itself immortal. There is a cure for such an attitude, but unfortunately it is a cure from which one never recovers.

We evolved haphazardly within a random universe; no purpose underpins us, no God watches over us, and no assured glorious future awaits us. We are saddled with a dualistic consciousness that weighs us down and plays tricks on us. We have built and seem unable to dismantle a dehumanizing and destructive civilization and mindset that perpetuates deceit and greed. We can make ourselves as comfortable as possible, as doctors tell their terminally ill patients, but we are sadly incurable.

I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who...prayed..with...unexpiated tears to 'dear,kind God!

Thus far, the best that could be said for the day was that it was half over.

You can do what you want. You can fly as far as you want, be as determined as you want, but sooner or later you have to ask yourself, or the person with you, ‘will there be everything we have hoped for?’ When you realise there’s so little hope left, it is like seeing an entire shadow all over the world.

Given as much law as that man will be able to do anything and go anywhere, an the only trace of pessimism left in the human prospect today is a faint flavour that one was born so soon.

Don't let the disappointments of today kill tomorrow's blessings, destroy the negative flashes of pessimism, and focus on the mirror of optimism.

I know that I'm doomed and I'm not going to struggle against my fate. I am only writing this down so that when you do not see me any more you will know that my enemy has finally triumphed.

When things come to the worst they generally mend.

A pessimist is a liar, unless he destroys himself, and no less of a hypocrite than a priest who defiles the holy.

If you expect the battle to be insurmountable, you've met the enemy.It's you.

I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise.

All you can do is involve yourself totally in your own life, your own moment, Lonzi said. And when we feel pessimism crouching on our shoulders like a stinking vulture, he said, we banish it, we smother it with optimism. We want, and our want kills doom.

If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.

In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will.

Life curses some poor people with the love of luxury, while it blesses some with the very same thing.

Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.

Sometimes fiction is more easily understood than true events. Reality is often pathetic.

It is best not to be born or to die as soon as possible.

Many people place facts above faith and that makes things seem impossible for them

Fritz had to stop himself from interrupting when Karl spoke about the difficulty of working. Stories are just as hard as clocks to put together, and they can go wrong just as easily--as we shall soon see with Fritz's own story in a page or two. Still, Fritz was an optimist, and Karl was a pessimist, and that makes all the difference in the world.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.

Okay, even if we disagree on that point, we still need to keep living our lives, don't we?...

Beware of those who are bored and not passionate about life, for they will bore you with reasons for not living.

Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enough to beat the honest men and hang up them.

Disappointment focuses on ‘what is not,’ and completely misses the far greater reality of ‘what now is.

All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhere to appeal and nowhere to go.

The worst thing in life is having parents that always stand against you and never with you. They discourage you, instill fear in you, hold you back, push you down and never encourage you to fly forward. When I have kids, they'll already be born with propellers with added wings. Even if one tells me they want to go learn how to ride lions in Africa, if their heart is driving that desire, I'd say "DO IT".If we throw blankets over our children's dreams, we darken their world and extinguish their desire to live. I'd rather my kid die with a wild fire in his/her heart than with a malfunctioning or drained out fuse. Always allow your kids to keep humming with dreams and ideas that fuel their passions. Never tell them something is impossible. If you have a really strong determined kid, they'll go out there killing themselves trying to do the unachievable just to prove you wrong. And if you have a weak kid, they'll give up on life and settle for bagging Cokes and potato chips at your local grocery store.

Another flaw of the system is the fact that various danger fronts often require very different firmaments. As a logical superstructure is built upon each, there follow clashes of incommensurable modes of feeling and thought. Then despair can enter through the rifts. In such cases, a person may be obsessed with destructive joy, dislodging the whole artificial apparatus of his life and starting with rapturous horror to make a clean sweep of it. The horror stems from the loss of all sheltering values, the rapture from his by now ruthless identification and harmony with our nature’s deepest secret, the biological unsoundness, the enduring disposition for doom.

There are some for whom the good of mankind is their primary concern, and others who basically put their own considerations before everyone else. I was among the latter.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.

School prepares you for the real world... which also bites.

Tears streamed down her wrinkled face. This world that she had longed to change for the better was as bad as the one into which she had been born. "An exercise in futility," she murmured.

Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.

In fact, the balance wheel which maintains in motion the watch of metaphysics that never runs down, is the clear knowledge that this world's non-existence is just as possible as its existence."―from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. In Two Volumes, Volume II, p. 171

That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war.

Genius moves to creation, not to destruction. Only a very few have combined both.

Stain my eyes as I may, on all sides all is black.

If you want to protect your pride, you don't need people to like you!

It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.