Richard Rorty Quotes

I'd like to say things are bound to get better, but I don't really believe it.

To doubt is worse than to have lost; and to despair is but to antedate those miseries that must fall on us.

The whole thing is quite hopeless, so it's no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won't come.

Let whatever is going to happen to me happen. I'm expecting the worst for myself and I'm resigned to it.

If one truly has lost hope, one would not be on hand to say so.

I've ceased making predictions on things because we'll see how they turn out.

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.

I don't walk around saying everything is going to be wonderful.

To the pessimist the light at the end of the tunnel is another train.

I just don't have a lick of optimism left in me.

Time enough to think of the future when you haven't any future to think of.

Any system which says, This is a rotten world, wait for the next, give up, do nothing, succumb--that may be the basic Lie and if we participate in believing it and acting (or rather not acting) on it we involve ourselves in the Lie and suffer dreadfully... which only reinforces that particular Lie.

Also, it was a bit hopeless," he said. "A bit defeatist." "If by defeatist you mean honest, then I agree." "I don't think defeatism is honest, " Dad answered. "I refuse to accept that.

We don't have to convince people how screwed they are.

Not being optimistic falls a long way short of predicting that all is finished.

But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.

If there is a chronic infirmity by which every teacher ought to be afflicted, it is, indeed, hope.

Everywhere I looked life seemed to be full of problems and they were just going to go on and on. It was never going to get any better.

That's the scary thing about hope," she said. "If you let it go too long it turns into faith.

I don't have any expectations of anything.

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.

That still has to be there. And so, it's kind of an interesting question you brought up. Because, on the one hand, yeah, it'd be lovely. I certainly don't see that happening. In fact, I see the opposite happening.

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.

I want no part of making any contribution whatsoever to the despair which eventually follows downbeat thinking.