We live in the best of all possible worlds
Gottfried LeibnizRead
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42 quotes
We live in the best of all possible worlds
I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.
The road to success is always under construction.
Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.
Pessimism is a very easy way out because it is a short view of life. If you look at what is happening around us today, you can't help but feel that life is a terrible complexity of problems. But if you look back a few thousand years, you realize that we have advanced fantastically. If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of mankind.
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
I’m really afraid to feel happy because it never lasts
Under the influence of fear, which always leads men to take a pessimistic view of things, they magnified their enemies' resources, and minimized their own.
I never saw a pessimistic general win a battle.
I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.
The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.
I believe innovation is the most powerful force for change in the world. People who are pessimistic about the future tend to extrapolate from the present in a straight line. But innovation fundamentally shifts the trajectory of development.
If you're not being pessimistic, you're not being very realistic. But I think one must always have hope, and when you have children, of course, you have no choice but to work your tail off to try and protect the future for your children. And that is infused by hope in the end.
I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.
The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you're worrying about whether you're hopeful, or hopeless, or pessimistic, or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you're showing up, that you're here and that you're finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That was what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world.
Coaches are basically schizophrenic. We are pessimistic to the press and among fellow coaches, but to our team, we are the eternal optimists.
The combination of rumination and negative mood is toxic. Research shows that people who ruminate while sad or distraught are likely to feel besieged, powerless, self-critical, pessimistic, and generally negatively biased.
When thinking about the future, it is fashionable to be pessimistic. Yet the evidence unequivocally belies such pessimism. Over the past centuries, humanity's lot has improved dramatically - in the developed world, where it is rather obvious, but also in the developing world, where life expectancy has more than doubled in the past 100 years.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.
It's not the tools that you have faith in - tools are just tools. They work, or they don't work. It's people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I'm still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on Earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data.
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