Optimism Quotes

“It was a slow fall, through warm experiences and good laughs. It didn't even feel like love until I got to the end. Even then, it was not the hard surface of rock, but the scorching embrace of more.”

“Negativity is often looked upon [in the USA] as a kind of thought crime. Not since the advent of socialist realism has the world witnessed such pathological upbeatness.”

“The beginning is always NOW.”

“You really need to love something or someone in order to work hard enough to be very successful. You have to believe in something and have a certain optimism. Faith and optimism come from love.”

“Great Leaders Create More LeadersGood leaders have vision and inspire others to help them turn vision into reality. Great leaders create more leaders, not followers. Great leaders have vision, share vision, and inspire others to create their own.”

“He caught a glimpse of that extraordinary faculty in man, that strange, altruistic, rare, and obstinate decency which will make writers or scientists maintain their truths at the risk of death. Eppur si muove, Galileo was to say; it moves all the same. They were to be in a position to burn him if he would go on with it, with his preposterous nonsense about the earth moving round the sun, but he was to continue with the sublime assertion because there was something which he valued more than himself. The Truth. To recognize and to acknowledge What Is. That was the thing which man could do, which his English could do, his beloved, his sleeping, his now defenceless English. They might be stupid, ferocious, unpolitical, almost hopeless. But here and there, oh so seldome, oh so rare, oh so glorious, there were those all the same who would face the rack, the executioner, and even utter extinction, in the cause of something greater than themselves. Truth, that strange thing, the jest of Pilate's. Many stupid young men had thought they were dying for it, and many would continue to die for it, perhaps for a thousand years. They did not have to be right about their truth, as Galileo was to be. It was enough that they, the few and martyred, should establish a greatness, a thing above the sum of all they ignorantly had.”

“I find the strongest predictor of people who do well at Shopify is whether they see opportunity as something to compete for, or do they see opportunity as essentially everywhere and unlimited? It's a rough proxy for pessimism and optimism.”

“Regardless of how black the page, he had always managed to turn it and move on to a new chapter in his life.”

“My thoughts on the descent of our moral prejudices – for that is what this polemic is about – were first set out in a sketchy and provisional way in the collection of aphorisms entitled Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits, which I began to write in Sorrento during a winter that enabled me to pause, like a wanderer pauses, to take in the vast and dangerous land through which my mind had hitherto travelled. This was in the winter of 1876–7; the thoughts themselves go back further. They were mainly the same thoughts which I shall be taking up again in the present essays – let us hope that the long interval has done them good, that they have become riper, brighter, stronger and more perfect! The fact that I still stick to them today, and that they themselves in the meantime have stuck together increasingly firmly, even growing into one another and growing into one, makes me all the more blithely confident that from the first, they did not arise in me individually, randomly or sporadically but as stemming from a single root, from a fundamental will to knowledge deep inside me which took control, speaking more and more clearly and making ever clearer demands. And this is the only thing proper for a philosopher. We have no right to stand out individually: we must not either make mistakes or hit on the truth individually. Instead, our thoughts, values, every ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘if ’ and ‘but’ grow from us with the same inevitability as fruits borne on the tree – all related and referring to one another and a testimonial to one will, one health, one earth, one sun. – Do you like the taste of our fruit? – But of what concern is that to the trees? And of what concern is it to us philosophers? . . .”

“New Orleans, the storm, Perry, the river: they all reminded me not to take anything for granted. It all washes away, and we are all washed away with it. So when then ground is steady and the sky is clear, we should breathe deep until our lungs inflate against our ribs and hold in that one breath until we are lightheaded with the privilege of being human. The absolute privilege of being human.”

“Don't let the blights of the past hold you back from the bliss of the future”

“There are physical characteristics which are inherited. These include things like good looks, high intelligence, physical coordination. These attributes contribute to success in life, and success in life is a determinant of optimism.”

“A sprinkle of magic, a ton of fun, a heap of optimism, a lot of joy, a glimmer of hope – ’tis the gift of the Happy Rosy Day gratitude journal.”

“You will die, and I, and all we can create—why not a city? But if there is one thing that deserves to be immortal, it is knowledge.”

“Life is short let go of ego, entitlement, resentment, hate, doubt. Hold on to positivity, gratitude, optimism, hope, love.”

“Every nation can harness the energy of its citizens, either towards constructive work to generate optimism and hope, or towards tensions, unrest and war.”

“Make improvements, not excuses. Seek respect, not attention.”

“She was a mimicry of a facade fashioned from the half-truths of her life. She was a beautiful abomination, patched together from the most pristine and terrible parts she could find. She was a black crystal of many cuts and facets whose dark glow suffocated and entranced those it washed over. There was a pointlessness in her eyes and apathy in her stature, and further in, past the symphonies of nightmarish screams was a blinding light. All the capability she could ever ask for kept in a place she would never reach. She chose the ice rather than the fire, shivering and hard with heat sparse, for while a flicker can exist in freeze's cold, it's heat will not radiate, no matter how bold. She took my face in hands that would make ice seem warm and whispered a blizzard into my ear, a cascading song of fear after fear. The lies she spilled, mixed with regrets and appeal, were cloaked in the inferno of her rage, the anger, the only thing that really made her real. This was her one semblance of life, a bottomless and endless void of proportions vast with a calamity of fusion and fission streaking through, a mindless hue, an emotion with a face, a darling of her race. The cracks spew darkness from within her ever so pale skin. They congregated on her curves and flesh in black and churning rivers and streams. They flooded every dip with blackness. They filled every hollow with unstable curiosity, this is her release, this is when she is free. The faces of deceit always laugh, they never wallow for their lies are a pleasure tool, her insides are contorted in laughter the same way, just as slick, just as cruel. A crude combination of fascination, of animation, of the darkest demons of them all. She was poetry written in pen, scratched and scribbled again and again. Ink splattered across the page, and within those scrawled words, those small, sharp incisions, an image can be seen, and you're left to wonder what, in the end, this all could mean...”

“If you never try, you'll never know. You are what you manifest.”

“Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.”