Optimism

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Optimism, the opposite of pessimism, exemplifies a lifeview where one looks upon the world as a positive place. Optimists generally believe that people and events are inherently good. They have a so-called "positive" outlook on life, believing that things will work out in the end.

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• Despite the cautions just raised, there is abundant reason to believe that optimism – big, little, and in between – is useful to a person because positive expectations can be self-fulfilling.
  • Christopher Peterson, American Psychologist, ISSN 0003-066X, January 2000, p. 51

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• Optimism is the right side to look forward to..
  • Mark Aaron A. Corrales

• Always look on the bright side of life.
  • Monty Python
• Optimism is true moral courage.
  • Ernest Shackleton

• People ask me, "Are you an optimist?" I say "I hope so!"
  • Bill Bailey, "Part Troll" stand-up tour

• Humans are, on net balance, builders rather than destroyers.
  • Julian Simon

• Optimism is cowardice.
  • Oswald Spengler

• For myself I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
  • Winston Churchill, speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet, London, November 9, 1954

• I find nothing more depressing than optimism.
  • Paul Fussell

• The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

• The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
  • James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion, 1926

• The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
  • Havelock Ellis

• The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.
  • Peter Ustinov

• Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.
  • Helen Keller

• My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.
  • Ellen Willis, Tom Wolfe's Failed Optimism (1977)

• "Optimist" is a word which here refers to a person...who thinks pleasant thoughts about nearly everything. For instance, if an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well, this isn't too bad. I don't have my arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me if I am right-handed or left-handed", but most of us would say something more along the lines of "Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!"
  • Lemony Snicket, The Miserable Mill

• Optimist - "Opti" meaning "eye", and "mist" meaning "fogged up", you understand.
  • Anonymous

• Two men look out through the same bars:
  One sees the mud, and one the stars.
  • Frederick Langbridge, "A Cluster of Quiet Thoughts"

• The Doctor: Where's your joy in life? Where's your optimism?
  Romana: It opted out.
  • Doctor Who, "The Armageddon Factor", Episode One

• K9: Optimism: belief that everything will work out well. Irrational, bordering on insane.
  • Doctor Who, "The Armageddon Factor", Episode One

• A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
  • Herm Albright

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