1,853 Quotes About Optimism

I may have no notion of what's in the beans for me now, with everything upside down and sideways. But one thing I know is that I belong in this moment.

Neither my readers nor I are in the relatively sunlit uplands depicted in White Teeth anymore. But the lesson I take from this is not that the lives in that novel were illusory, but rather that progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and *reimagined* if it is to survive.

...I learned a valuable lesson about opportunities: even if an experience doesn't seem like it will benefit you, do your best to make sure it does.

I'm an optimist about myself and a pessimist about the world.

If history teaches one thing, it's not to be too optimistic.

Only people who believe deeply and almost fanatically in a dream can struggle so hard with inner doubt and conflict, and without losing, in the presence of frequent disagreement on particulars, a deep sense of purpose and mutual respect.

But in church we turn our back on fictions.

To the right, the clouds have more shape and against the blue look like the figures of a Wedgwood dish. What a fine fucking bowl beneath which they have all been caught and asked to swim out their days! Look at it this way,” people used to say to Mack. “Things could be worse”—a bumper sticker for a goldfish or a bug. And it wasn't wrong — it just wasn't the point.

Many of the so-called American characteristics,’ a chronicler of the [WW2 University of Minnesota starvation] experiment wrote, ‘—abounding energy, generosity, optimism—become intelligible as the expected behavior response of a well-fed people.