Milan Kundera Quotes

Being a pessimist is just such a gloomy way of looking at things, so I have to hope for the best - life wouldn't be worth living if we didn't have hope. And I also do think that human beings often do do wonderful, correct, brilliant things. So, on balance, I'd like to be optimistic about the future.

There's probably a little greater case for pessimism than optimism. But I do not rule out optimism.

Some people think of the glass as half full. Some people think of the glass as half empty. I think of the glass as too big.

I think everyone has the same question on their mind: Is the glass half-full or half-empty?

When hearing a door creak, the optimist thinks it's opening and the pessimist thinks it's closing.

We need more pessimism that the future might be a lot worse, and we need more optimism that the future might be better.

The Church of TED is very optimistic. Bulgarians are some of the most pessimistic in the world. There are the Happy, the Unhappy and the Bulgarians.

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

Whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed . . . perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don't always come up to your expectations either . . . they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.

The best is yet to come, and won't that be fine? You think you've seen the sun, but you ain't seen it shine.

Hope should no more be a virtue than fear; we fear and we hope, according to what is promised or threatened us.

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

I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe we should think about today..." "No, that's giving up... I'm still hpoing that yesterday will get better.

For optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better. For pessimists, there is no amount of happiness—should such a thing as happiness even obtain for human beings except as a misconception—that can compensate us for life’s hurt.

I'm getting a little fed up with some of the pessimism that I'm hearing. I know some people who will not be convinced we've really won anything until the media changes. And that isn't gonna happen. They look at the media not liking Trump and they think it's failure. They look at the media ripping Trump and destroying him and they think it's gonna work and it means failure. And I get so fed up. I said, "Do you people not understand we're on the cusp here of one of the most exciting next four years?" The growth potential, the potential of putting America back together.

Our notion of an optimist is a man who knowing that each year was worse than the preceding, thinks next year will be better. And a pessimist is a man who knows the next year can't be worse than the last one.

The moment you start thinking it's hopeless, then it is. [But], if you think it's gonna get better, it really does. Life is a test.

Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty. I see a glass that's twice as big as it needs to be.

I'm not as optimistic as Gene Roddenberry was. I fall somewhere in the middle. But as a romantic, I like to think things are going to get bigger rather than worse.

If we consistently act on the optimistic hypothesis, this hypothesis will tend to be realised; whilst by acting on the pessimistic hypothesis we can keep ourselves for ever in the pit of want.

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.

The positive outlook that optimists project does not come from ignoring or denying problems. Optimists simply assume that problems are temporary and can be solved, so optimists naturally want more information about problems because then they can get to work and do something. Pessimists are more likely to believe that there is nothing they can do anyway, so what's the point of even thinking about it?

If you take a negative, turn it inside out, it's still a negative. You're just revealing the ugly inside of negative so I say keep it as is.

You're such a cynic," Molly said. "I think cynics are playful and cute.

You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.