Trevor Paglen Quotes

People think it’s easy to be cynical and pessimistic, but it’s incredibly hard work. It’s much easier to be hopeful.

I laughed. “You’re too young to be so … pessimistic,” I said, using the English word. “Pessi-what?” “Pessimistic. It means looking only at the dark side of things.” “Pessimistic … pessimistic …” She repeated the English to herself over and over, and then she looked up at me with a fierce glare. “I’m only sixteen,” she said, “and I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.

Hope cherishes no illusions, nor does it yield to cynicism.

optimism is a disease

The good news is hopeful doesn't mean dumb. The bad news is cynical doesn't mean smart.

I'm a realist all the way. I'm too cynical to be an optimist. But I've lived too much of a charmed life so far to ever be a pessimist.

I'm an eternal optimist with a small degree of cynicism.

The cynicism that you have is not your real soul.

As we get older - perhaps I'm just speaking for myself - we can get too cynical.

It's not okay for me to behave as if I'm cynical about the future. Even if I am.

Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.

The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.

Smile to the future and it will smile back to you

I think I'm optimistic, yeah, especially in real life, but I think it's funny to be pessimistic.

The trouble with traditional American conservatism is that it lacks a naturally cheerful, optimistic disposition. Not only does it lack one, it regards signs of one as evidence of unsoundness, irresponsibility.

Optimists focus on the place they are going. Pessimists focus on the obstacles along the route. To become an optimist simply look ahead.

I am guilty of the great crime of optimism.

I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.

O, merry is the Optimist, With the troops of courage leaguing. But a dour trend In any friend Is somehow less fatiguing.

Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair.

Better to be an optimist who gets disappointed than a pessimist who has no hope.

I'm an optimist in my heart - I'm a hopeless pollyanna just like my mother - but a pessimist in my head. I think that's the dialectic we all need to be in.

Now, I happen to be an optimist.

An optimist is the person who has never had any experience at all.