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To be a prophet it is sufficient to be a pessimist.
Sep 10, 2025
Pessimism is an emotion not a philosophy.
I couldn't survive my own pessimism if I didn't have some kind of sunny little dream.
Perhaps it's my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.
It is far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism.
The Democrats have always owned the pessimism. It's just the way it's worked out.
My pessimism has never been flabby.
Life is a business that does not cover the costs.
I like it when pessimism goes unrewarded.
Pessimism only describes an attitude, and not facts, and hence is entirely subjective.
Pessimism is the luxury of the powerful.
Fear is born in uncertainty and nourished by pessimism.
Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.
I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.
Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed.
Younger people have so many opportunities. I don't see any pessimism among them.
It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst.
One has to have the courage of one's pessimism.
Pessimism is a waste of time.
How happy are the pessimists! What joy is theirs when they have proved there is no joy.
the thing about pessimism is that in most cases it's nothing more than a front behind which a body can hide its most sweetful yet painful hopes. please forgive mine.
Are you responsibly optimistic? Pessimism and leadership do not mix. Leaders are positively visionary.
Finally, develop tenacity and an optimistic outlook. It doesn't mean that everything will always work out or that you won't suffer. But pessimism seems to be designed to force you to suffer before the fact!
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterize modern thought, but Hamlet invented it
In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right.
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
Pessimism is reactionary because it makes the very idea of improving the world impossible.
I believe in optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect. But my hope is the people, the society, which is ahead of the government.
Stop moping, sule," galladon said with a grunt."It doesn't suit you-it takes a fine sense of pessimism to brood with any sort of respectability.
Lose the pessimism, Ms. Lane. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pessimism is not only unwarranted, it is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think the cause is lost, it will be. No one works hard for a cause they think will lose.
To refuse everything, to say, even when there is something which really should be done, "Ah, that's no longer feminist," is a pessimistic, even masochistic tendency in women, the result of having been habituated to inertia, to pessimism.
The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
Pessimism is playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play.
Optimism may sometimes be delusional, but pessimism is always delusional.
Dark times have come, but in spite of this we have not yet reached a twilight of the gods and even today we have no reason for doubt-filled pessimism, for the Wihinei of the Aryo-Germanics is too deep - even if unconscious and latent - rooted in every Aryo-Germanic soul and it awaits onl the call to awaken which will and must catch fire in order to instill the flame of inspiration in the Aryo-Germanic sensibility.
Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.
When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and only then, have you grown old.
The older books were quite light-hearted. But I think most of my novels do end on a deep note of pessimism. Shadows seem to be closing in. The final conclusion isn't that life is wonderful and everything is bright and cheery and in the garden.
Optimism is denial for chumps with no life experience". "What's pessimism?" I said. "Religion without God.
It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear.
We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed that not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun.
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.
Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.
Now, what is the left's worldview in general? What is it? If you had to attach not a philosophy but an attitude to a leftist worldview, it's one of pessimism and darkness, sadness. They're never happy, are they? They're always angry about something. No matter what they get, they're always angry.
Nietzsche inveighs against every sort of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts of decadence. He preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a tragic culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in which the spirit of ancient Greece might be born again. He rejects the pessimism of Schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from exuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the Greeks.
Pessimism negates the existing world. Yet its negating is ambiguous. It can simply will decay and nothingness, but it can also renounce what exists and thus open a path for a new formation of the world.
Pessimism is a losing strategy. Leadership demands both confidence and optimism in abundance.