Optimism Quotes

At the beginning of a class/course/seminar, show a glass 1/2 full of water. Ask, now is this glass 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? Shows tendency towards pessimism or optimism. Do you tend to concentrate on what’s there or what’s missing? As far as class is concerned, want to encourage students not to look for what is missing during the course but how what is being presented can be used and what needs it can fill.

Optimism is just a useful adjunct to wisdom. By itself it cannot provide meaning. Optimism is a tool to help the individual achieve the goals he has set for himself. It is in the choice of the goals themselves that meaning – or emptiness – resides. When learned optimism is coupled with a renewed commitment to the commons, our epidemic of depression and meaninglessness may end.

Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better … The optimist bounces back from defeat, and, with his life somewhat poorer, he picks up and starts again. The pessimist gives up and falls into depression. Because of his resilience, the otimist achieves more at work, at school, and on the playing field. The optimist has better physical health and may even live longer. Americans want optimists to lead them. Even when things go well for the pessimist, he is haunted by forebodings of catastrophe. For pessimists, that is bad news. The good news is that pessimists can learn the skills of optimism and permanently improve the quality of their lives.

LIFE BEGINS EACH MORNING: Whether one is twenty, forty, sixty, or eighty; whether one has succeeded, failed or just muddled along – Life Begins Each Morning! Life is a day, this day. All past days are gone beyond revisiting. All days that still may come are veiled in mystery. Each new day is Life, and life begins anew with it. Each night of life is a wall between today and the past. Each morning is the open door to a new world – new vistas, new aims, new plans, new thoughts. The greatest fact in life is this, that it never is too late to start again. Biography simply overflows with inspiring examples of this truth. However discouraging your days may have been, keep this thought burning brightly in your mind Life Begins Each Morning!

When you have come to the end of all the light that you have known and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen; there will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.

A father had two sons, one an incurable optimist, the other a resolute pessimist. He decided to conduct an experiment. He filled a room with toys, amusements and all kinds of goodies and placed the pessimist in it. He filled another room with horse manure and placed the optimist in it. Some time later he looked in on them. The pessimistic son was standing with his hands on his hips looking at all the goodies in the room with a suspicious expression on his face. He looked in on his other son. The optimist was smiling, standing waist deep in the manure, shoveling it as fast as he could over his shoulder. “What are you up to?” the dad asked his son. “Well, dad, with all this crap in here, I figured there’s go to be a pony in here someplace!!”

Take 15 golden minutes making positive affirmations: At the beginning of each day, take 15 minutes to think about the positive actions you intend to take that day. At the end of each day, take 15 minutes to think about what happened good that day and what new things you learned that day.

In South Africa, they dig for diamonds. Tons of earth are moved to find a little pebble not as large as a little fingernail. The miners are looking for the diamonds, not the dirt. They are willing to lift all the dirt in order to find the jewels. In daily life, people forget this principle and become pessimists because there is more dirt than diamonds. When trouble comes, don’t be frightened by the negatives. Look for the positives and dig them out. They are so valuable it doesn’t matter if you have to handle tons of dirt.

Can-Do Spirit CAN’T-DO. We’ve never done it before. We don’t have the resources. It will never work. We don’t have the expertise. It will never fly. I CAN’T. CAN-DO. We have the opportunity to be first. Necessity is the mother of invention. We will give it a try. Let’s network with those who do. We’ll never know until we try. I CAN.

When someone offers you a challenge, don’t think of all the reasons why you can’t do it. Instead, say, “Yes!” Then figure out how you’ll get it done.

When it is darkest, the stars come out.

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

Twenty-five years of study has convinced me that if we habitually believe, as does the pessimist, that misfortune is our fault, is enduring, and will undermine everything we do, more of it will befall us than if we believe otherwise.

They are able because they think they are able.

There is always a brighter tomorrow.

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

The pessimist may be right in the long run, but the optimist has a better time during the trip

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

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist knows it.

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

The happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

Opportunity is ever worth expecting; let your hook be ever hanging ready, the fish will be in the pool where you least imagine it to be.

Never overlook the good in a bad situation.

Making the best of a bad situation or the ultimate optimist: If you fall off a building you can kick and scream all the way down or you take the opportunity to look in the windows as they go by.

Life is a grindstone. But whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.

Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.