John Grant

People have always painted me like a pessimist, like somebody who sees the glass half-empty. But I think the fact that I keep showing up and saying, 'No, there must be a way for me to live in this world,' that shows I'm an eternal optimist.

American Musician

James Gunn

I guess I am an optimist in a pessimist brain, if that makes any sense. I believe in the innate goodness of most people in this world, and yet I'm a damaged soul like many other people and have my own demons and things I struggle with.

American Director

Albert Schweitzer

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... the truly wise person is colorblind.

German Theologian

James Branch Cabell

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

American Novelist

Jacques Barzun

I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

American Educator

J. Robert Oppenheimer

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

American Physicist

Josh Widdicombe

I'm one of life's pessimists. I'm ready for everything to go wrong at any moment.

English Comedian

F. Scott Fitzgerald

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

American Author

Maynard James Keenan

I'm a pessimist. But I'm a pessimist with a sense of responsibility.

American Singer

Cyrano de Bergerac

A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.

French Playwright

Understand that pessimists expect negative outcomes, not just occasional bad luck.

Expectation Mindset

Pessimists tend to convey a gloomy or negative emotional tone in conversations.

Emotional Tone

In some cultures, being a pessimist is frowned upon and seen as lack of optimism.

Cultural Perception

 alluding to the Voltaire character who declared, "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." Well, Professor Pangloss, as it happens, was a pessimist. A true optimist believes there can be much better worlds than the one we have today. But all of this is irrelevant, because the question of whether progress has taken place

Is the world getting...

 views like that things today are better than ever for humanity things are still quite bad and things can get much much worse so i'm not an optimist because i think that yes things are bad and they can get much worse but i'm not a pessimist either because i think that things are

Yuval Noah Harari...

 and doesn't know how to use the internet? Trust me, I've heard them all. So when you think about an idea like this, you have to beware of pessimists because they are known to have a problem for every solution. So I want to invite you to think about the bigger ideas.

A bold idea to replace...

 For example, these two show great growth in income, absolutely flat happiness curves. My field, the field of psychology, hasn't done a whole lot to help us move forward in understanding human happiness. In part, we have the legacy of Freud, who was a pessimist,

Nancy Etcoff: Happiness...

 and the world does still have plenty of problems. But the pessimists and doomsayers who say that the world can't get better are simply wrong. So how did we achieve this success? Well, a lot of it was because of economic growth.

How We Can Make the...

 flat happiness curve my field the field of psychology you know hasn't done a whole lot to help us move forward and understanding human happiness in part we have the legacy of Freud was a pessimist who said it for suit of

The surprising science...

 neither am I a pessimist. I'm a very serious "possibilist." It's a new category where we take emotion apart, and we just work analytically with the world. It can be done. We can have a much more just world.

Hans Rosling: Global...

 and in my recent work I've been a bit of a pessimist. So I thought this morning I would try to be the optimist, and give reason to hope for the future of the Internet by drawing upon its present.

Jonathan Zittrain: The...

 At the break, I was asked by several people about my comments about the aging debate. And this will be my only comment on it. And that is, I understand that optimists greatly outlive pessimists.

Craig Venter: A voyage...

 Good morning. I think, as a grumpy Eastern European, I was brought in to play the pessimist this morning. So bear with me.